Saving Cain
by domenika marzione
Summary: Ultimate XMen: Alex Summers has gotten rough entry into every universe into which he's ever been dropped. Why should this one be any different? [Note: written years years! before Brian Bendis got around to introducing the 'real' Alex Summers.]
1. Prologue

* * *

Saving Cain: Prologue

* * *

> It's ten o'clock. Do you know where your children are?
> 
> Professor Charles Xavier does. We're all sprawled on couches and floor in front of the giant television in the entertainment room. And we're watching the news.
> 
> Most of us - okay, Piotr, Henry, and I - will watch it on a regular basis. But tonight's perfect attendance is due to a homework assignment from the Professor. And it's not hard to see why.
> 
> "Tempers flared today in Washington Square Park as protesters and clashed with the members of the Friends of Humanity as the human rights organization marched in opposition to NYU's recently announced Department of Mutant Studies," the carefully coiffed news anchor reads.
> 
> We see footage of what looks to have been a small but lively free-for-all. Banners waving on broomstick standards, megaphones, and the intermixing of preppy NYU students and Goth-punk-Hitler Youth chic favored by the FoH.
> 
> "The Sentinels aren't enough," a young man -- a teenager, really -- growls, not looking at the camera but instead at the mayhem going on around him. I've seen him in the footage before; he's one of the local lieutenants for the FoH as can be evidenced from the t-shirt tucked neatly into black pants that are in turn tucked into combat boots. He's got blond, spiky hair and he's got his eyebrow and nose pieced and he looks to be wearing Goth-style eyeliner. He turns to face the camera and his gaze is intense.
> 
> "The government should stop being so afraid of the opinions of the leftists that hole up in places like this," he sneers, sounding much older than he must be. "These are the same weaklings that protested Vietnam only because they were afraid they'd have to fight themselves. They're nothing. Cowards. The government should follow through on its promise and eradicate every single mutant in the country - and the world. They are a danger to everyone and the longer mutants are allowed to roam free, the longer we will all be at risk."
> 
> "You know, he'd be cute if he wasn't such a raging moron," Jean says idly from her space next to me on the couch. "The eyeliner works for him. Sets off those beautiful blue eyes..."
> 
> "He's not a moron," I counter. "That's the problem. There's a brain underneath all that hatred. We'd be a lot better off - and a lot safer - if he was just some dumbass who took the ferry in from Staten Island 'cuz he was bored."
> 
> "Fourteen people were arrested and six were taken to the hospital for minor injuries after the violence erupted shortly after two in the afternoon," the anchor continues, "The Dean of Students at NYU, Roger Hagrew, told reporters that the University was greatly saddened by the day's events."
> 
> "New York University is proud of its mission to further education and understanding," Hagrew, a middle-aged man who looks distinctly unhappy at having to be where he is, intones. "We are disappointed that members of our New York community do not share in our pride, but we will not be intimidated by them."
> 
> The video goes back to the studio. "While many major universities now have mutant culture courses, last week NYU became the first American school to create a separate department for the study of so-called 'homo superior' and it's society. Starting next semester, undergraduates will be able to major in Mutant Studies and University President Vishwala Sanders told reporters that she'd like to see the graduate division open by 2003."
> 
> "Since last week, NYU has been the subject of numerous demonstrations and today's events mark the second time police have been forced to don riot gear to quell the violence."
> 
> "I don't want to be confused with those idiots," a young woman in her late-twenties, dressed in the unofficial uniform of the Village (i.e., all black) tells the camera. "But I have to admit to being a little scared. I have no problem with mutants. I like mutants. But I live in a building with a lot of NYU students and I don't want my home destroyed because Sentinels think some of them might be mutants just because they're studying them."
> 
> "It's good to know that NIMBY lives on," Ororo spits out. She's flopped across the loveseat, her top half across Henry's lap and her hands holding one of his enormous paws.
> 
> "What's that?" Bobby asks from the floor. He's got popcorn. This is entertainment as far as he's concerned.
> 
> "Not In My Back Yard," Ororo explains. "Everyone loves everyone else until they want to move next door."
> 
> The news moves on to other things. By the time they get around to the weather, Jean has disappeared. Ororo offers up a challenge to the perky blonde meteorologist - "What do you want to bet it's going to rain tomorrow, cornbread?" - when the weather comes on and Piotr makes all of us be quiet for the two seconds of hockey coverage on the sports report.
> 
> It's the early news, so it's only eleven when it's over. Bobby takes over the remote control and turns it to one of the sports stations for the baseball program and the rest of us flee. Except for Piotr, who promised Bobby that he'd try to learn about baseball before continuing to decry it as a non-sport played by weak-willed, overweight Americans.
> 
> "Scott," I hear Professor Xavier call me as I pass by his study. "A moment please?"
> 
> I come in and am motioned in to one of the chairs by the fireplace. Professor X is in the other - he moves himself from seat to seat for variety, he says.
> 
> "I'm going to have to ask you to be Cyclops for a little while tonight," he begins as he hands me a manila folder.
> 
> I nod. Our sort of business - whatever it may be - doesn't lend itself to normal working hours.
> 
> The fire - a small one, it's still cool out and I know Professor Xavier likes to keep the windows open if he can - crackles quietly as I take the envelope and settle in.
> 
> Inside the folder are photographs of the FoH lieutenant who was on television before. Alex X. Black-and-white close-ups, surveillance photos it looks like. Someone's been tailing this kid.
> 
> "That's why you wanted us to watch," I ask, not really making it a question. "So that everyone would see him in his natural environment."
> 
> "Indeed," he agrees, frowning at the cat as she edges towards the fireplace. "He is going to be the focus of a very delicate, very dangerous mission."
> 
> "Dangerous? We've handled FoH before," I protest. I know better than to scoff at danger and Professor X doesn't throw that word around lightly. But still.
> 
> There is a tea service set up and I shake my head at the Professor's silent offer. Even a little caffeine this late at night and I'm going to be up until all hours.
> 
> "What can you tell me about this young man from what you saw on the news tonight?" The Professor asks me in his teacher's voice.
> 
> "He's bright. Really bright. Probably a straight-A student until he fell in with the FoH. They normally don't put kids in charge unless there's a reason," I report. "He's violent, but selectively so. He looks like he's smart enough to conserve his energy."
> 
> "He's also a mutant," Professor Xavier adds and I don't bother to hide my surprise. "Oh, you can look shocked, Scott. It will be a surprise to him, too."
> 
> "You found him with Cerebro?"
> 
> "Yes," he confirms. "His signature is erratic, which is consistent with mutants whose powers have yet to manifest."
> 
> "So you have no idea what he could do?" I ask and the Professor shakes his head sadly.
> 
> Great. We're going to have to get him here before he manifests. Which means we're going to have to kidnap an FoH lieutenant who just happens to be brighter than the average bear. Something's bothering me, though...
> 
> "There's something else, isn't there?"
> 
> "His records are there," Professor X says as he points to the folder in my hands.
> 
> I shuffle the photos to the side and see what is the academic record of one Alexander Summers.
> 
> "No." I can feel the bile rising in me. This can't be him. Not Alex...
> 
> "I'm afraid so, Scott." Kindly, like I'm going to break.
> 
> Perversely, that only pushes me further. "How long have you known? How long have you known that my brother - the one relative I have in this world - is not only alive but living in the same fucking city?"
> 
> Xavier weathers my storm like the telepath-and-trained-shrink that he is. "What good would it have done you?" he asks once he can sense my anger has crested. "He hates mutants. He hates you. He'd kill you if he could and knowing that you were his brother would not make any difference. Would have made it worse, if anything."
> 
> "I didn't need to hang out with him," I yell back, standing up with the folder clutched tightly in my hand. "I just would have liked to know that he's okay. That he's happy."
> 
> "You wouldn't have been able to just let him be, Scott," he replies mildly, replacing his teacup in its saucer without taking a sip. "You know that. You'd have wanted to rescue him from himself..."
> 
> "And now I can," I sneer. "How convenient."
> 
> "We'll have a briefing tomorrow morning," Professor Xavier looks up at me as if I was merely stretching. Still with that endless patience. "I wanted you to have the material in advance. See if you can't come up with a few ideas."
> 
> "You want me to treat this like any other op?" I ask in pure disbelief.
> 
> "Absolutely not. But I will respect your decision to do so before the others."
> 
> I start. "How did... you're fucking with my head again, aren't you?"
> 
> "No, Scott, I'm not," he says, the tiniest tremor in his voice giving lie to that flawlessly calm façade. He knows that's where my greatest anger lies and we both know that's where his guilt lies. "I'm not even reading your thoughts despite the fact that you're 'shouting' them at me. But we both know that our group would function better without the added distraction and we both know that you're a very private man. It will come out in due course and you'll deal with it then."
> 
> I nod curtly, accepting the explanation for what it is. I'm still angry - still pissed off to the extreme - but I'm edging into leader mode now. Cyclops is less inclined to let anger get in the way of plotting strategy. "What time tomorrow?"
> 
> "Eleven. And I'm rescheduling your workout until afterwards," he replies and I can see the tension between his eyebrows lessen a bit. "We also both know that you're not getting to sleep at any decent hour tonight. There's no use wasting the workout."
> 
> * * *
> 
>   



	2. Saving Cain: Chapter One

* * *

Saving Cain: Chapter 1

* * *

> Alex Summers turned his Walkman down a little as he found a space by the door of the subway car to lean against. It was quieter on the inside of the train than it had been on the platform and it was, he knew, quite rude to make others listen to his music. Not everybody appreciated the Misfits like he did.
> 
> Alex loved the disquieted look people got when someone who looked like he did exhibited manners. Especially on the Upper East Side, a rarefied part of Manhattan if ever there could be a fortress without walls. You could walk down the streets and know who lived there and who was passing through.
> 
> Alex looked like he was passing through. He dressed respectably for school - button-down shirt (untucked, but ironed) and undershirt, army pants (clean) with his wallet chained to a belt-hook, polished combat boots and a freshly showered body (one that was bereft of any decoration in the wake of a long-and-weird discussion with his foster father about wearing makeup to school). But he would no more be confused with a local resident than he would be with a student at one of the myriad of exclusive prep schools housed in the brownstones that stood between his own school and Central Park. The silver ring in his eyebrow and the silver stud in his nose assured that, if nothing else.
> 
> The train pulled in finally to 96th Street and Alex got off with a modest crowd of people, a mix of school kids and groggy interns showing up for shifts at Mount Sinai. It was 7:15, too early for most of the kids from his school except for the other juniors who were taking the AP American History tutorial like he was. Since very few of them would talk to him, Alex was able to make the long uphill trek to school uninterrupted.
> 
> "Wanna cookie, 'Lex?" Minda asked as he took a seat in the auditorium used for the early-morning cram course.
> 
> "I can't understand how you can eat Oreos before eight in the morning. Save some for later. I'll bum one in official," Alex said as he sat down next to her. Miranda Gao was one of the few of his original cadre that would still talk to him after his... allegiances had become well known. Minda didn't like his politics and made it abundantly clear. They still liked the same music, however, so as long as they kept away from anything involving homo superiors, they were still friends. Minda, he was fairly sure, was convinced he was going through a phase.
> 
> This faith was not in evidence for most of the crowd Alex had started school with in seventh grade. Most of them now either ignored him or offered a façade of friendship that came out of either fear or that stupid teenaged urge to do something nominally dangerous. And for the last year-plus, hanging with Alex Summers had been considered dangerous.
> 
> This had not always been the case. After the initial shock of being in a school where everyone else was as smart as you were, the usual cliques common to twelve-year-olds had formed - the kids who played Chinese handball whenever they could, the kids who had known each other from the elementary school housed on the first floor, the crowd from Staten Island that hung out with each other because nobody else would, plus every kind of group that existed in a normal school.
> 
> Alex had been one of the centers of the popular crowd. Good looking with his blond hair and blue eyes and tall athlete's body, a part of the large Park Slope contingent that formed tight bonds on the long ride up from Brooklyn each morning, and with a history that made him that much different from the rest of the over-achievers that walked the school's halls, Alex had been the epitome of cool. His teachers adored him. His classmates voted him into positions of leadership and in his first year of varsity sports he had already being talked about as captain of one of the track teams. And -- most importantly - he could always get a girl to come with him to one of the stairwells above the fourth floor to fool around.
> 
> All that had changed during the summer between ninth and tenth grades. Alex had been part of Friends of Humanity for over a year by that point, but had kept it quiet. Not out of embarrassment - 'Any opinion you are afraid to express is an opinion you shouldn't be having' had been a favorite quote from one of his social studies teachers - but out of simple practicality.
> 
> But that summer was a busy one for the FoH. Alex had started spending more time at NYC-FoH headquarters in Alphabet City and less time with his school buddies, most of who were away for the summer anyway. A new local director had come in with a new plan of action and Alex, being a precocious young man, had risen quickly in the ranks of the organization. Even at just-turned-fifteen he was being asked to deliver statements to reporters. He spoke well - two years of mandatory Communication and Theatre had certainly paid off - and found himself before television cameras and reporters' tape recorders.
> 
> Returning to school in September had been both rude awakening and crucible. The friends and affection he had had enjoyed in June was gone, burned up in the summer heat and a few sound bites on the evening news. The unease of his classmates and teachers was almost palpable, the turned backs and whispered words behind his own not unexpected but cutting nonetheless. Intellectually, Alex had known that this would happen, had thought himself prepared to face rejection. But the previous year had been so normal, his status so unaffected by his outside activities, that the change felt more abrupt than it probably was.
> 
> By Thanksgiving, there wasn't a person at school who didn't know that Alex Summers Hated Mutants. By Christmas, there had been a specially convened PTA meeting to see whether grounds could be found for expelling him. [There wasn't and there wouldn't be so long as Alex didn't commit a criminal act while on the school's grounds.] By Valentine's Day, there had been a feature in the New York Times on the issue.
> 
> Alex had continued on, unbowed. He reveled in forcing the faculty and student body into living up to the principles of liberalism that they were wont to spout. Kids who sneered at a local protest to keep a new apartment building from offering low-income housing (thus dropping surrounding property values in New York City's most exclusive and expensive neighborhood) now had to live with the cost to their school's reputation by its having an FoH lieutenant in the student body.
> 
> Alex didn't enjoy being the house that spoiled the neighborhood - he loved his school - but had understood the necessity of it. Hypocrisy was one of the worst sins - because unlike being a mutie freak it was completely voluntary. [Unlike mutants, however, hypocrites were usually only dangerous to their own reputations and could thus be adequately dealt with by more conventional means.]
> 
> School was a sanctuary for the mutants, Alex would tell all who asked, like the holy ground in one of his favorite movies. And while he'd be the first with a bat should he encounter any of his mutie classmates (eighth and ninth grades had been _full_ of surprises) down in the Village or off with his FoH unit on a mission, he wasn't going to tackle one of his few outed classmates on their way to or from classes.
> 
> As such, eventually the fear that Alex would commit murder in one of the stairwells abated and an uneasy equilibrium had set in between him and the rest of the school microverse.
> 
> During the spring semester of tenth grade, he had been amused and delighted when his Public Speaking teacher had used a videotape of one of his impromptu press conferences as a teaching aid and had actually encouraged him to use the class to polish up his skills. ["Your views may be abhorrent, Master Summers, but your listeners should be forced to take issue with your principles, not with your presentation."]
> 
> Now, most of the way through the eleventh grade, classmates had stopped ostentatiously sitting across the room from him, group projects were accomplished without cross words being exchanged, and after the first time a kid had gotten caught there were no more attempts to leave nasty notes in his locker.
> 
> Alex knew from the FoH rolls that he wasn't the only member to be affiliated with the school (five faculty members and the parents of forty students, to be precise), but wasn't about to start a branch of the FoH as a school club. He had a group of people he associated with and a very few of his friends who would not speak to him when his 'followers' were surrounding him. As with the FoH itself, there were people in his new school cohort whom he didn't like and wouldn't want to be around in any other circumstance. But even in a tiny, intimate school such as his own, life could be a mite lonely if forced to walk alone.
> 
> Not that he was ever truly alone. Alex was a bit of a celebrity in school for entirely the opposite reasons he had been two years earlier. He had initially found the attention annoying - little seventh graders wandering by his locker like it was the lions' run at the Bronx Zoo - but had grown to ignore it. Mostly because of his new commitments, Alex had given up all sports but cross-country track and had dropped his spot on one of the newspapers' rosters in favor of the much more onerous task of editing the FoH newsletter.
> 
> All in all, Alex viewed school not only as a place to learn but also as a training ground. He was especially determined to put all of his history classes to good use. The Friends of Humanity (and he knew it was only a matter of time before he was heading up the outfit) would _not_ make the same mistakes that almost all radical groups did. There would have to be continued support from the educated and professional classes and that was only possible with educated leaders. [Minda, who understood him all too well, occasionally called him a demagogue-in-training.]
> 
> One of Alex's main tasks with the Friends of Humanity was to show the people with money - and thus the ears of the politicians - that the anti-mutant movement wasn't made up solely of the sons and daughters of the Ku Klux Klan and could in fact be a welcome place for the wealthy and educated. While many in the movement were all-around bigots, Alex was fond of saying that he only discriminated against mutants and morons. Knowing that the bottom end could never be eliminated, Alex wanted to build a new coalition out of the upper group - a network of upwardly mobile professionals whose concern about the future was their unifying point.
> 
> The future - a mutant-free future safe for humans - was the reason why Alex got up at 5AM once a week to be at school in time for tutorial. It was why he spent a few hours in the library each day before heading down to FoH headquarters. It was why he had wanted to apply for Early Graduation (but had been shot down by his foster parents, who were quite sure he'd grow out of his 'quirky' beliefs if he just had another year of being a kid) to start college next year. It was his entire focus.
> 
> At least most of the time. But at the end of second period, Alex's main focus was on his having not had breakfast that morning. He was dedicated to the future, but not at the expense of getting up an extra half-hour early on tutorial mornings (the alarm going off at 4:55AM was bad enough) to eat. His hunger was assuaged somewhat by begging two cookies off of Minda during official class, but by fourth period, he was concentrating less on pre-calculus and more on where he'd go to buy lunch.
> 
> The courtyard was swarming by the time Alex and his small posse returned with their food. The entire school took lunch at the same time and that meant long lines at the area delis and pizza parlors and little sitting room in the sunken brick pit that served as the school playground. Alex had gone to the bodega on 98th and bought arroz con pollo - he had a rally to marshal that evening and didn't know when dinner would be - and was not going to object when Louie suggested that they remove themselves to a bench in Central Park instead of being run over by seventh graders playing frisbee.
> 
> In hindsight, "I think I'm going to take one of my excused cuts and skip physics tomorrow" was probably not the best choice for immortal last words. But Alex didn't have much choice at the time and hindsight is what it is.
> 
> * * *
> 
> http:www.offpanel.net/dmz/ 


	3. Saving Cain: Chapter Two

* * *

Saving Cain: Chapter 2

* * *

> "You ready?"
> 
> "Cyke, if we were any more ready, we'd just have to lead a trail of breadcrumbs to the van," Storm grumbles from the driver's seat of the second vehicle she has... liberated... for their use. She's waiting there with Bobby, who has spent time earlier that morning testing his powers on a water main under the street. Con Edison has since blocked off 94th Street between Madison and Park to deal with the mess.
> 
> "Marvel Girl, is your team in place?" Cyclops asks into his headset.
> 
> "The eagles have spotted the field mouse and are going in for the kill, Fearless Leader," Jean chirps back. Standing nearby the courtyard entrance and like a student from the Lycée Francais around the corner - complete with casually dangling cigarette - she watches both the scene in front of her and the kids in the schoolyard behind her. It is oddly unfamiliar to be standing among a couple of hundred kids all roughly her age. Before her telepathic powers had been harnessed, she never could. After she had been trained, she had never wanted to. "Will you relax?"
> 
> "I'll relax when this is all over," Cyclops retorts. When they were all safe and sound - especially Alex - and back in Westchester. He leans back in the driver's seat, able to see Jean in the rearview mirror.
> 
> The plan is simple in its elegance, Scott is sure, but not without its trouble spots. Getting Alex is the easy part. Piotr has assured him that he had done enough... pickups... for his old bosses down in Little Odessa that things would go smoothly. It is the rest of the plan that Scott is more worried about. Anything that depends any more than incidentally on Manhattan traffic is not a good idea.
> 
> Across the street from the parked van, dressed identically in sunglasses, black jeans and t-shirts in the peculiar shade of green that was favored by members of the Human Supremacy League, Piotr saunters up 94th street from Madison toward Park and Henry comes in from the other direction. They intercept Alex and his group a few feet from the courtyard entrance and Alex's guard immediately and visibly goes up. The HSL is a poor man's Friends of Humanity - a group comprised mostly of suburbanites and New Jersians with similarly bland methods of operation and a strong distaste for intellectual interaction. They are quite public about their desire to eliminate Alex X, but neither the FoH nor the police seem to think they have the energy or ability to put action to words.
> 
> Piotr calmly pulls out a very large gun and aims it at Alex. Before the younger man can even put up his hands, three shots - no silencer - ring out and Alex's chest is a bloody mess as he falls to the ground. Piotr turns and flees the way he came, toward the vehicle Storm's revving up on Madison Avenue. He dives into the rear passenger door Bobby has thrown open and the trio speed off uptown to the sound of squealing tires.
> 
> With a little help from Jean, nobody in the rapidly growing crowd of students takes their eyes off of the retreating Colossus (whom all would describe to police as blond and wiry) until after Beast has scooped up the messy, limp body left behind and landed with graceful panache into the back of the van Cyclops now has ready and idling on 94th. They, too, speed off down the cleared street and skid into a left turn onto Park Avenue heading uptown.
> 
> In the confusion that ensues - the school has a nonexistent criminal element as well as the sensibilities of its more socially elitist private academy neighbors - Jean barely has to use her telepathic powers to assure that her stroll down to Fifth Avenue is unnoticed. A bicycle was earlier chained to a No Parking sign and she unlocks it with casual grace, puts on her helmet, and pedals away. "I'm clear," she says into her headset as she coasts downhill on Madison past the Mount Sinai Medical Center. "How's it going, Cyke?"
> 
> "We made it without even running a light," he answers as he parks the van in the dark, unmanned lot underneath the stone bridge that supports the just-emerged-from-underground Metro-North tracks. "We're going to start the clean-up. Storm, where are you?"
> 
> "The car is parked - legally - on First Avenue," Storm replies as she saunters up the street with her arm through Piotr's and with Bobby tagging along right behind like the annoying little brother dragged along on a date. She can hear someone yelling out a window about how she shouldn't dirty herself with white folk and she flips the bird in return as Piotr pulls her closer. "We're walking up 103rd now and Colossus would like to register a complaint about having to change clothes in the back of a compact car."
> 
> "Tell him to take it up with you - you're the one who hotwired the Lexus," Cyclops replies as he moves into the back of the van to help Beast. "You've got fifteen minutes, people, assuming the train left Grand Central on time. Everyone head up to the station and we'll see you at the meeting point."
> 
> "Aye-eye, sir," Jean affirms.
> 
> "Gotcha," Storm replies.
> 
> "How's it looking?" Cyclops asks as he flicks on the portable flashlight he has brought and uses its suction cup to stick it to the roof of the van to supplement the insufficient car light. The day is bright and clear, but it is dark and cool underneath the stone vault arch.
> 
> "Messy," Henry replies with a cheerful grin as he finishes undoing the laces of Alex's combat boots. "Do you want to strip him or dress him?"
> 
> "Let me dress him," Cyclops says. "I'm still clean, so if I don't have to change, that'll be a few less minutes wasted."
> 
> "Good idea," Henry agrees and pulls off his own shirt before he takes off Alex's shirt and undershirt. He dumps the former in a plastic bag and leaves the latter two on a towel on the van floor. A bucket of water is uncovered and Henry dips in a washcloth to wipe Alex's chest, arms, and face clean. Toweling him off roughly, Henry turns to the other man. "All yours. The darts did their thing without so much as tearing the skin near the puncture points. He'll have some bruising, but nothing else. Certainly not what it looked like."
> 
> Henry moves to the other end of the van's rear and goes about changing the rest of his clothes as Cyclops moves in with a fresh t-shirt and army pants for Alex.
> 
> Up close Cyclops can see the resemblance between himself and Alex. The jaw is the same, the nose is the same, and they are built the same way. He wonders why none of the others have seen anything from all of the photos from the briefing and the surveillance they have done themselves. But as far as they know, Alex X is just another screwed-up kid, history unknown and uncared about. For the time being, Cyclops is grateful.
> 
> "Are you sure about leaving all of this behind," Henry asks, gesturing toward the wrecked shirt and bucket of bloody water. "It's your blood, after all."
> 
> The tranquilizer darts had been attached to stage bullets, the kind with little bladders to be filled with something that would look like blood for the cameras. But this being theater of the real, they have used actual blood. Cyclops's blood.
> 
> "Not only am I sure, I'm going to add to it," Cyclops replies, pulling out a unit of blood. All of them had blood on file in case of emergency and this certainly qualified as enough of one to him. Uncapping the bag, he pours the contents all over the towel and Alex's shirts and tries not to be squeamish as he massages the blood into the fabric.
> 
> "Aren't they going to test this blood?" Henry asks, confused. There had been a lot of discussion about this part of the plan during the procedural briefings. Neither Cyclops nor Xavier had allowed any questions on the decision, a choice that only added to the disquiet instead of eliminating it. "And aren't they going to notice that it doesn't come from Alex X?"
> 
> "Yes and no," Cyclops replies, struggling to pull Alex's arms through the polo shirt they have brought for him. "They'll test it, but they won't do the tests that will show that it's not his. It'll be close enough."
> 
> "Professor Xavier's going to fog the mind of the Medical Examiner? It shouldn't come out similar unless you two are..." Henry trails off, realization dawning. "Oh my stars and garters."
> 
> "Henry McCoy, please meet my little brother Alex," Cyclops says ruefully, gesturing down at the unconscious boy.
> 
> "Jesus," Henry mutters. "I knew there was something about him that reminded me of someone, but I never would have made the connection. Your glasses, they completely throw people off... He doesn't know, does he?"
> 
> "No, and that's going to be the fun part," Cyclops says. "Which is also why we should make sure we're in Westchester before he wakes up. He's liable to be... pissed off when he comes to."
> 
> "Completely understandable," Henry agrees, producing a Yankees cap and sunglasses. "Let's transfer him to the car." Putting the cap and glasses on Alex, Henry scoops up the younger boy and backs out of the van door that Cyclops has opened for him. Getting the all-clear, Henry half-carries, half-drags Alex to the car parked next to the van and waits for Cyclops to open the rear door. Alex is placed in the right side seat, buckled in, and then handcuffed to the door.
> 
> Cyclops does a last once-over of the van. He has the duffel bag containing Henry's clothes with him and everything else is to be left behind. The police will eventually find Alex's bloody clothes and wallet, the towel, the bucket of water and washcloth. The latex gloves he and Henry still wear - they had each worn several layers of gloves - are in the duffel bag that will be burned upon return to the mansion.
> 
> Satisfied, he gets into the passenger side of the SUV Storm has left for them - Piotr will undoubtedly fume some more once he knows that Ororo has left the big car for Henry. Henry has his prescription sunglasses on and between them, the car, and the loud Hawaiian shirt Henry has on, they looked like the Jersey boys returning from a party in the city that the license plates says that they are.
> 
> But instead of heading to New Jersey, they stay on the East Side and drive downtown to the 59th Street Bridge and head into Queens. It's a no-toll bridge, which means no cameras at the tollbooth that could catch any of them on tape. Henry takes an early exit off of the Long Island Expressway and then a 'scenic' route to the meeting point outside a junkyard by Shea Stadium.
> 
> "We're in place," Cyclops says into his headset to Storm. "Where are you?"
> 
> This is the part that Cyclops isn't happy with. The quartet is supposed to take the Metro-North one stop from 125th Street in Manhattan to Fordham Road in the Bronx, then pile into yet another vehicle Storm has arranged for them to use. They'll drive down from the Bronx into Queens and meet up among the discarded metal and scraps of planes and cars across the inlet from LaGuardia Airport. Successful completion of the plan requires some faith both in a few of Storm's less savory connections (not a problem) and in the satisfactory course of traffic on the Whitestone Bridge (definitely, definitely a problem).
> 
> "On the Grand Central just passing underneath the N train," Storm replies after a moment. "We should be there in five minutes."
> 
> Eight minutes later, Storm pulls up and parks underneath the 7 train's elevated tracks.
> 
> "You stole a church bus?" Henry asks in disbelief.
> 
> "I didn't steal it," Storm huffs. "I traded it in for the Lexus I left in the city."
> 
> "Do I want to know?" Cyclops asks.
> 
> "The chop shop gave me this and the van you used in the city," Storm explains anyway. "I told them where the Lexus would be parked."
> 
> "I didn't want to know," Cyclops sighs. "So how are we getting back to Westchester? Is this a rental?"   
Bobby's with Jean by the bus, kicking at bits of junk on the ground until Jean hits him in the arm and he stops.   
Cyclops would have preferred that Colossus, Storm, Marvel Girl, and Iceman stayed on the train to Salem Center and wait at home instead of joining them here. The plan is unstable enough that he'd prefer that it not have become a school trip. But pissing off both of the girls by cutting them out of the action and then leaving Colossus to deal with them just didn't seem fair, hence the reunion.
> 
> "We'll go back to Salem Center in the bus," Storm says, flipping back the hair that has been swept forward in the breeze off of the Long Island Sound. "I'll drop everyone off and someone can follow me to the chop shop in another car and then we'll come home."
> 
> "Do we want to have the bus seen at Xavier's?" Henry asks.
> 
> "It is not a vehicle we used at the scene," Piotr replies with a shrug. "I'm guessing the Lexus and the van will be in tiny pieces by sundown and the bus was never in Manhattan."
> 
> "Besides, there are only so many places we can drag an unconscious person around without drawing attention," Cyclops agrees. "Speaking of, is he still sufficiently out, Marvel Girl?"
> 
> "Yeah. Dreaming nasty little mutant-hating plans, but out cold," Jean answers with a sneer. "Can we get a move on? It doth stink here."
> 
> "I'm glad someone else said something," Bobby mumbles.
> 
> "It's low tide and the sulfur is high," Henry says, gesturing in the direction of the swampy area that borders the inlet of the Long Island Sound.
> 
> "I don't care _why_ it stinks," Bobby grouses. "I just want it to stop stinking."
> 
> "Well, let's be mindful of Iceman's sensitive schnozz and get going," Cyclops announces. "Into the bus, everyone."
> 
> Traffic on the westbound Grand Central is light considering the time of day and it is a clear ride through to the Triboro Bridge. Jean gives a telekinetic kick to the camera at the toll plaza and they continue on to the Bronx, getting only mildly delayed by traffic before arriving in Westchester.
> 
> The bus pulls into the circular driveway at the mansion without notice - it is still early enough that the neighborhood kids are still in school and the nannies have yet to leave the house to wait at the bus stop. Colossus, carrying Alex, follows Cyclops into the house while Henry goes around back to return a few minutes later behind the wheel of the Mercedes.
> 
> "Well, I suppose this will do," Storm sighs as she heads back toward the driver's side of the bus. "I don't think the Professor owns a car that won't look out of place in the South Bronx."
> 
> "Be back by dinner you two," Jean says and waggles a finger at the pair before following Bobby up the stairs.
> 
> * * *
> 
>   



	4. Saving Cain: Chapter Three

* * *

Saving Cain: Chapter 3

* * *

> The first thought Alex consciously noted having was that death smelled an awful lot like Earl Grey tea. Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.
> 
> "Good evening, Alex," a cultured voice said to him.
> 
> Opening his eyes, Alex was greeted with a scene that - while completely copacetic with Earl Grey tea - was not exactly what he thought to expect.
> 
> "Where am I?" he asked, looking around. In a bedroom and in a bed was the immediate, obvious answer. But it wasn't his room and it wasn't his bed and he sincerely doubted that Rombi, his foster family's annoyingly cheerful golden collie, had morphed into...
> 
> "Jesus Christ!" He sat up sharply. Only a vicious head rush kept him from successfully leaping out of bed and he landed gracelessly on the floor before scrambling back up to his feet. "I've gone to hell."
> 
> And the devil looked like the world's foremost mutie lover, Charles Fucking Xavier, himself.
> 
> "You're not in hell, Alex," Xavier chuckled. "Although I'm sure this must seem like an unpleasant place to be at the moment. I'm also sure that in a matter of course you will come to see it as a refuge and perhaps even as a home."
> 
> "Home?" Alex asked incredulously, looking around frantically for something - anything - that could be used as a weapon. But there were no pokers by the fireplace and no vases and no flowerpots and, Alex realized, absolutely nothing that could be heaved, wielded, or broken to make a useful tool. "You've _got_ to be kidding me."
> 
> "I'm afraid we've had to take the liberty of... removing certain items from your room," Xavier continued on unperturbed. "And no, I'm not kidding. Contrary to popular opinion, I am indeed in possession of a sense of humor, but it is not on display at the moment."
> 
> "What do you want with me?" Alex asked, moving to the window. He tugged with all of his not inconsiderable strength on the brass handles, but the window didn't budge. Looking out, he could see that he was on the third or fourth floor, too high to reasonably expect to jump and land safely, but this was rapidly becoming a moment to stop being reasonable.
> 
> He spun around and eyed the door. Xavier was between him and there, but Alex was sure he could outmaneuver an invalid in a wheelchair. But these were old doors, he mused. Not only were they probably solid oak, but they were also lockable by a key. And Xavier was in no doubt in possession of the key.
> 
> "If you'd stop trying to escape for a moment," Xavier began, "I'd be more than happy to explain things to you."
> 
> "And then you'll let me go?" Alex asked incredulously, moving slowly around the perimeter of the room so that there was a direct line between him and the door. Just in case it wasn't locked.
> 
> "When it's safe for you to go, then yes, you will be free to leave," Xavier said with a nod. "But I'm afraid that for the time being, you are... being encouraged to stay here."
> 
> "Encouraged," Alex repeated with a snort. "You fucking kidnapped me. Why? Are you going to brainwash me until I start singing 'Mutants of the World, Unite'?"
> 
> "That was Magneto's theme song, such as it was," Xavier replied, giving a moue of distaste. "And I sincerely doubt that brainwashing will be necessary. You're a very bright man, Alex, and I'm sure your sense of self preservation will eventually overcome your rather repugnant ideology."
> 
> "You're going to _torture_ me until I'm a mutie lover?"
> 
> Now that he was up and alert, Alex noticed the vague flu-like symptoms that seemed to be creeping up on him. A side effect of the tranquilizers they had used on him, no doubt. He always reacted badly to anesthetics of any kind; even cold medicine threw him for a loop.
> 
> "That was perhaps a poor choice of phrase," Xavier admitted with a wry smile. "I meant to say that I have faith that you will eventually come to believe on your own that mutants are indeed people who deserve respect and consideration."
> 
> "Has the weatherman said that hell is freezing over soon?" Alex asked, edging closer to sit at the chair by the desk. He was now only about three yards from the door. "What's my sense of self-preservation got to do with it, then? If you're not going to torture me, of course."
> 
> "Haven't you noticed the headaches?" Xavier asked, the wry smile melting into something closer to a smugness that disturbed Alex more than anything he'd said. "The way your nerves suddenly ache and spasm? All of the other little things that never went away after puberty came and went?"
> 
> "You've poisoned me?" Alex's mind was reeling. That would explain the achy body and headache even more than the tranquilizers would. He knew he should have been more careful with his person. He'd refused all suggestions that he use a bodyguard and had been insistent on not taking any special precautions. He went where he wanted and did what he wanted without any restriction (other than parental controls that were lessening gradually as he crept closer to legal adulthood) because he was a human and it was the mutants who should be running scared.
> 
> "Don't be so melodramatic," Xavier sighed tiredly. "You know what the signs are."
> 
> "Fuck that and fuck you," Alex growled and ran for the door. It was unlocked, the self-confident bastard... and right on the other side was a very, very large man.
> 
> "Ah, so we meet again," the giant greeted him cheerily, a Russian accent clearly discernable.
> 
> Alex stared until realization hit. This was the man (although upon closer inspection Alex really wasn't sure how much older than him the guy could be) who had shot him. Almost instinctively, Alex brought a hand to his chest. It was sore, but obviously not bullet-riddled.
> 
> "You remember me," the giant continued, still disgustingly cheerfully. "I'm touched. We should get to know each other better if we are going to keep running into each other like this. But not now," he said, gesturing with his chin behind Alex. "Now you go back inside and finish your talk. Then we can chat. You like hockey?"
> 
> Alex was about to request that the big Russian go commit the same act of onanistic sodomy that he had encouraged of Xavier when a new voice from behind the giant spoke up.
> 
> "Just get him back in there, Colossus. Quiz him on the Rangers later."
> 
> "Yes, boss," Colossus sighed, then looked down at Alex. "In," he commanded, reinforcing it with a powerful shove to the shoulder. "And be good."
> 
> Alex tripped clumsily on the edge of the rug and fell hard on his rear. Damned drugs must not be out of his system. Before he could get up, the owner of the disembodied voice moved into the room past Colossus.
> 
> "Cyclops," Alex sneered as he stood up and dusted himself off. Suddenly things made sense. Colossus. Cyclops. He had been kidnapped by the X-Men. "I guess it was only a matter of time. I see you've been forgiven for your little joyride to the Savage Land."
> 
> "Apparently," Cyclops replied, voice tight. "You haven't gotten around to telling him yet, I gather," he said to Xavier.
> 
> "Tell me _what_, you freak?" Alex stormed back toward the window. If he couldn't open it, perhaps he could go through.
> 
> "I was almost there when he decided to meet Colossus," Xavier replied dryly.
> 
> "Will you..." Alex spun back to face the room.
> 
> "Shut up, Alex," Cyclops barked. "Just shut up, sit down, and stop pacing like a fucking caged animal. Nobody's going to hurt you here, which is more than could be said were the situation reversed."
> 
> "Why should I believe you?" Alex asked with a deceptively mild voice. He wasn't shouting, he was proud to note. "What's to say that your definition of 'not hurt' is the same as mine?"
> 
> "True enough," Cyclops replied, shrugging. "But you're really out of options, aren't you? You're not going to get past Colossus and you're not dumb enough to try to go through the window. Even if you could, you'd be stuck once you hit the ground. It's three stories down. You're not a track star if you have a broken leg and you don't have the training to know how to land.
> 
> "Your best chance is to sit through whatever the Professor thought was important enough to bring you here to listen to and then hope we're as peace-loving as we say we are and will then let you go. You can do that much, Alex. You're not going to catch anything from us _muties_."
> 
> "Contact is bad enough," he growled back. But Cyclops did have a point. Alex sat down in the healthily-stuffed chair by the window. There was nothing to do but wait until another chance to flee presented itself.
> 
> "Now, I believe we were just at the point where you realized that there was more to your... growing pains... than you'd care to admit," Xavier began mildly.
> 
> Alex fumed. Did the man ever display any sort of emotion? "You were about to accuse me of being a closet freak, you mean?" he corrected.
> 
> "I accuse you of nothing," Xavier replied. "I am merely stating facts."
> 
> "How could you know anything about me?" Alex asked, leaning forward in his chair. Across the room, almost parallel with Xavier, Cyclops (who was leaning faux-casually against the desk) shifted position as if on battle alert. Alex smiled inwardly at even this minor sign of having some control over the situation.
> 
> "Oh, I'm sure you've got your connections," he continued, "being all buddy-buddy with the president and all. But that will only get you where and why I've been arrested and - if you're good - my file with Social Services." Left unsaid, Alex continued in his head, was that if Social Services couldn't figure out much of anything about his past, Xavier sure as hell wasn't going to come up with anything. Xavier couldn't hope to bluff him that way.
> 
> "You'd be surprised what a little due diligence will bring up," Xavier replied. "But detective work is not why you were brought here."
> 
> Alex watched as Xavier turned to Cyclops and stared at him, almost as if they were having a conversation only with their eyes. Of course, you couldn't see Cyclops' eyes. Freak.
> 
> "The research is still new," Xavier continued, turning back to him. "For obvious reasons. But the X-factor does seem to defy many laws of genetic probability. Among first generation mutants, siblings displaying the X-factor rate disproportionately higher than might be expected, even in cases where the parent has undergone some sort of biological modification. Radiation exposure, for instance."
> 
> "And you're telling me all about this because?" Alex asked, making a great show of boredom. Just because he couldn't go anywhere didn't mean he had to pretend that he was enjoying himself. He would amuse himself by shifting around a little just to make Cyclops jump, but his body ached enough to make the pain not worthwhile.
> 
> "Because you are part of this study now and it is only fair that you be apprised of that fact," Xavier answered. "Although for many other reasons it would have been ideal had your parents still been alive..."
> 
> "You wouldn't have grown up to be such a shit, for starters," Cyclops bit off loud enough to be heard.
> 
> "Fuck you, Cyclops," Alex growled.
> 
> "Professor, I think I'd like to handle it from here," Cyclops said evenly. To Alex's surprise, Xavier nodded and wheeled himself to the door.
> 
> "And where are the unfortunate souls who whelped you?" Alex took comfort in Cyclops' visible flinch.
> 
> "Same place yours are, Alex," Cyclops replied after Xavier left the room. "Buried among plane wreckage somewhere in Nebraska."
> 
> Alex sat bolt upright, anger coursing through his body and eradicating all pain in its wake. "What do you know about my parents, you unholy freak of nature? How dare you try to draw some analogy..."
> 
> "No analogy, Alex," Cyclops cut him off. "I don't do analogies. You're the gifted kid in the family, apparently."
> 
> "What the hell are you talking about?" Alex shouted as he stood up. "I have no freaks like you in my family! I have no fucking family at all."
> 
> "Major Christopher Summers, US Air Force," Cyclops replied, pushing off from the desk and standing up. "Died in an off-duty plane crash along with his wife Katherine. Sons Scott and Alexander were the only survivors."
> 
> "That's in the report," Alex growled. "You could have read about that anywhere."
> 
> That was a lie and he knew it. His own memories of the plane crash were foggy and incomplete; he had apparently blocked out the entire incident and it had been years before he'd remembered enough to even properly identify his birth family. There was official record now, albeit sealed. If he had any blood relatives, they did not know that Chris and Kate's sons had survived the fiery crash and Alex had not seen his brother since he'd been placed with his first foster family almost a decade ago. He didn't even know if Scott ever awoke out of the coma; for all he knew, Scott was still in a facility in Nebraska.
> 
> "Mom used Dad's belt to tie us together after Dad put the parachute on me," Cyclops continued quietly. "She told us she loved us and she made me promise never to let you go. You screamed all the way down."
> 
> Alex leaped backwards, crashing into the window. "No. This is all some kind of mind-fuck. You just want to get the FoH off your back. I've read all about brainwashing techniques. You want to create a common bond so that I'll feel sympathy."
> 
> "You still have the scar on your right shoulder blade," Cyclops continued, taking a step forward. "It's real faint, but I looked for it. I pushed you over a tricycle when you were four. You landed on your back and your shoulder caught on something."
> 
> "That's a shot in the dark," Alex scoffed frantically. A completely unbelievable day had just taken a turn a few exits past surreal. "_I_ don't even remember how I got that."
> 
> "Mom made you dress up as a tomato for Halloween when you were seven," Cyclops persisted, moving closer so that he was now standing next to the bed, almost arm's length from Alex. "She sewed the costume herself, stuffed it with crumpled newspaper until you could barely get out the doorway. You'd wanted to be Batman and pitched a fit until Dad told you that you'd get more candy if you were something everyone else wasn't."
> 
> "No," Alex whispered. There was no way to know about that. Hell, he only remembered it when Cyclops brought it up... Cyclops. "You're not Scott."
> 
> "Yes I am," he replied, taking another step closer. "Or do I have to keep proving it to you?" He didn't wait for an answer. "You used to chew on my G.I. Joe action figures. I got into trouble for hitting you after you left a tooth mark in Cobra's facemask."
> 
> "No," Alex murmured as he turned toward the window, the headache that had been forgotten returning with a vengeance. "This is all a head game. You've got a telepath here. You're just picking things out of my brain."
> 
> "Bullshit," Cyclops shot back. "I couldn't sit down for a week after Dad tanned my hide. I'm your brother, Alex."
> 
> "No," Alex repeated, finding his resolve and grabbing onto it for dear life. He walked past Cyclops, almost daring him to reach out and grab him, and was most of the way to the door before turning around. "If you're a fucking mutie then you're no family of mine. You should have died back then with Mom and Dad. Saved the world a lot of trouble." He took strength from watching Cyclops - and he had to _stay_ Cyclops - reel under the force of his words.
> 
> "Guess what, brother mine," Cyclops bit out, walking back toward Alex. "You're an abomination just like me. Didn't you hear the Professor? You'd have to be a true freak of nature _not_ to be a mutant. You aren't that lucky, Alex."
> 
> "The hell I'm not," Alex growled and then winced as the headache suddenly turned into an axe between his eyes. He reached for the back of the desk chair.
> 
> "You just haven't manifested yet," Cyclops continued. "You've led a cushy life. No stress to bring it out."
> 
> "No stress," Alex chuckled bitterly. "Well, you sure as hell are making up for it all right now." He opened his eyes and straightened his posture, letting go of the desk chair. "So now that you've gone and ruined my day by pissing all over my family history, is there anything else or am I free to go?"
> 
> "One more thing," Cyclops continued, taking a slow step toward Alex. "I'm sorry."
> 
> "For what? For being born a freak?"
> 
> "For letting you go," Cyclops replied. "I broke that promise. And look what you turned into. Mom and Dad would not be impressed."
> 
> "How the hell would you know?" Alex retorted, anger almost overwhelming him. It was his most secret dream - what would his life have been like had there been no plane crash. And he was going to be damned before he'd let his mutant freak of a brother spoil that dream. "How do you know that they wouldn't be charter members of Friends of Humanity? How do you know that they wouldn't have smothered you the minute your mutation showed?"
> 
> "Oh, that's easy," Cyclops answered. "Our parents loved us enough to sacrifice their lives for us."
> 
> "That..." Alex stopped short. He suddenly couldn't see straight. His head felt like it was going to explode and he wanted very much to throw up. His body felt like it was made out of Jell-O and he didn't have the strength to push away when Cyclops grabbed him by the shoulders.
> 
> "Alex? Are you all right?" Cyclops asked, concern clear.
> 
> "You... poisoned... me..." Alex ground out, stumbling away and nearly falling onto the bed.
> 
> "Stop being paranoid," Cyclops replied with an angry sigh. "Let's get you downstairs to the medical lab. The Professor will meet us there..."
> 
> They never made it. Alex got as far as his feet when he suddenly felt like every cell in his body spontaneously combusted. He saw a blindingly bright light and then nothing.
> 
> And this time, there was no smell of Earl Grey awaiting him on the other side.
> 
> * * *
> 
>   



	5. Saving Cain: Chapter Four

* * *

Saving Cain: Chapter 4

* * *

> And then there is silence. It has been only a moment or two, but it feels like an eternity. Piotr Rasputin cocks an ear, listening for anything from structural creaks to wails for help... Nothing. The former is a relief. The latter...
> 
> "They're alive," Professor Xavier says from underneath him, no doubt sensing his thoughts.
> 
> Piotr had been at his post by the door - for some reason, playing the heavy for Cyclops versus the FoH punk is a lot more fun than serving as muscle for the mafiya crowd - when the Professor came out of the room.
> 
> Xavier had said that Cyclops could handle things from there. Piotr felt -- feels -- that a telepath would be a better interrogator, but perhaps Xavier knows something that indicates otherwise. However, since watching the Professor keep telepathic tabs on Cyclops and Alex X (leaving Cyclops to handle things is different, of course, than leaving Cyclops _alone_ to handle things) is somewhere between boring and rude, Piotr closed his eyes and leaned against the doorjamb.
> 
> And then it happened. There was an anguished scream that probably came from Alex X and a cry of surprise that was most probably Cyclops. A telepathic warning from Xavier came a heartbeat before the door exploded outwards, but it was enough time for Piotr to transform into his organic steel form. The blast sped his progress toward Xavier, but not so much that Piotr couldn't control his movements. He tackled the Professor, knocking him from his wheelchair to the ground as the hot wind - wind!?! - blew over them and covered them with debris.
> 
> And then nothing.
> 
> After Xavier speaks, Piotr stands up slowly - there are bits of door and other parts of the room on his back and all over the hallway.
> 
> "Holy Sh...inola!" Ororo exclaims, surveying the damage. Henry is next to her, Bobby just visible behind him.
> 
> "If that FoH hotshot hurt Cyke," Bobby begins threateningly, then trails off as he catches Piotr's highly skeptical smirk.
> 
> "Cyclops will be fine," Xavier says calmly from the floor. Piotr excuses himself and lifts the Professor back into the wheelchair that Henry has uprighted. "Jean, did you bring..."
> 
> "Right here, Prof," Jean replies, waving one of Cyclops' spare visors with one hand.
> 
> "Well," Xavier says, gesturing with his chin toward the room. "The debris precludes me being able to progress much past the doorway."
> 
> "That's hardly a problem, is it?" Jean asks. A wiggle of the fingers later, a path is telekinetically cleared.
> 
> Off to the side, Ororo murmurs that she, too, could have done that. Her control over the winds for small-scale motions is greatly improved. Henry pats her shoulder reassuringly.
> 
> "It does appear that our young guest has heat-related powers," Xavier says as Piotr rolls him slowly into the room.
> 
> "You have quite the talent for understatement," Henry comments as he moves into the room. "He melted the mirror."
> 
> In fact, the whole room has melted. Or is downstairs, Piotr muses as he looks around. A wall is missing and the moonlight streams in unfettered. The heat must have been incredible - well beyond anything a fire could generate. The mirror lies in a still-steaming puddle-shaped mass on the floor. Right next to where the dresser should had been.
> 
> The large bed that had not-quite dominated the room is a mass of melted springs in the corner, covered, like everything else (that remains) in the room, with some white ash-like substance. Honestly, Piotr thinks to himself, the room looks like the barns had years ago, after... "Chernobyl," he murmurs.
> 
> "Similar enough," Xavier agrees. "The radiation levels aren't nearly so potent. But the same effect."
> 
> There is a murmur of surprise from the group and Ororo mumbles about the FoH accidentally succeeding in their pogrom to sterilize all mutants.
> 
> "So where in this small-scale nuclear winter are Scott and our guest?" Henry asks.
> 
> Piotr notes that Henry doesn't sound distraught and idly wonders if Xavier isn't 'encouraging' them to be calm. They had all heard about what he had tried to do with Cyclops right before Scott had fled with the Blackbird. Or perhaps they are all taking much more subtle cues from the telepaths. Jean isn't freaking out and, bizarre love triangle with Wolverine aside, she does care about Scott.   
  
Xavier rolls himself closer to the edge of the gaping wound in the building. "Down at ground level, I fear."
> 
> Piotr goes as close to the edge as he dares and looks down. In the background, he can hear Jean, Ororo, and Henry moving to run downstairs. Bobby stays behind.
> 
> "Can I take a shortcut?" he asks, sounding as if he were unsure about whether or not it is an appropriate time to be using his powers.
> 
> "Indeed you should," Xavier affirms. "And take Piotr with you. I am more than capable of getting down to the med lab on my own."
> 
> "Don't you want to come?" Bobby asks. "I could make a slide instead of a pole..."
> 
> "The acceleration would be a little too much for either of us to handle, I fear," Xavier says, sounding surprisingly... amused to Piotr's ears. "Actually, that would make an excellent physics problem for you, Bobby. We should calculate my terminal velocity for slides of differing angles."
> 
> "How... how can you be giving me homework _now_?" Bobby sputters. "Scott's..."
> 
> "Fine," Xavier interrupts as he backs his wheelchair up and then turns around to head toward the door. "Conscious as of a few moments ago, in quite a bit of pain, but with no serious damage done." With that, he leaves the room.
> 
> "Let's go, Bobby," Piotr urges gently. "There's a lot of debris and I don't want Henry and Jean to have to lift everything themselves."
> 
> Bobby nods sharply and, screwing his face in concentration, builds them a cross between a fireman's pole and a monorail. Piotr follows Bobby down, choosing to let his bare hands freeze on the ice than take the chance that Bobby had not made the structure strong enough to bear the weight of his steel form. He makes a running landing a few moments later, hands burning from the cold and the friction.
> 
> The disaster site is just off the back porch. Ororo has turned on the lights that normally bathe the porch and accompanying walk in a gentle glow, but Jean uses her telekinetic muscle to aim the wrought-iron Victorian lamps at the pile of rubble.
> 
> The whole mess is in a crater and Henry speculates that it was created when Scott used his optic blasts to slow his fall. Else there shouldn't have been a hole in the ground and there probably shouldn't have been a relatively undamaged pair of young men underneath the rubble. Bobby shudders at the thought of Scott's terminal velocity considering the height of the fall and the acceleration above what was caused by gravity and vows to quit if the Professor gave him _that_ as a homework problem.
> 
> There is less debris than there should have been for an explosion, Piotr muses as he looks around, having helped cause a few himself. It stood to reason, obviously, if there had been some sort of small nuclear detonation, then some of what had been in the room has simply vaporized.
> 
> "I've got a bead on them," Jean announces. Piotr can see that she is wearing Scott's visor around her neck like sunglasses. "They're not in immediate danger, so all we have to do is clear out what's on top of them."
> 
> "Well, Piotr, Bobby," Henry sighs. "I think that's girl-speak for 'Get to work'."
> 
> Ororo cracks a smile, but ostentatiously waits a good long moment before joining in with the digging. "Where are we going to put this stuff?"
> 
> "I wish I could make an ice wheelbarrow or something," Bobby muses.
> 
> "Worry about that later," Jean says. "We're going to have to get people in to fix the walls and the landscaping anyway, let them toss everything into a dumpster."
> 
> "Are they close to the edge or more to the middle?" Henry asks. "I don't want to step on anybody..."
> 
> "Over closer to that side," Jean points. "Scott, don't even think about moving. Or talking," she calls out. "Just stay there and don't move. If you want something, just think at me, okay?"
> 
> It takes about a half hour of careful debris removal - they have to work from the top of the pile, lest they create an avalanche lower down - before the quartet finds the pair.
> 
> 'Oh, my," Henry whispers, almost reverentially.
> 
> Peering over, Piotr really can't add anything to the sentiment. Lying on their sides, spooned together, are Scott and Alex X. Scott's visor is gone - they had actually come across it digging (the bridge of the nose is cracked and it will need to be replaced) and he lays there, eyes squeezed shut, with his free arm curled protectively over Alex's face and head.
> 
> "Anything broken, Fearless One?" Jean asks as she carefully leans over and pulls Scott's arm away so that she can reach his face and put on the visor.
> 
> "A rib or three, maybe," Scott replies in a hoarse whisper. "Is he..."
> 
> "Out cold," Ororo answers. "I think I like him this way."
> 
> "Exhaustion," Jean adds, no doubt sensing Scott's concern. "You must have broken the fall for the both of you."
> 
> It would be typical Scott, Piotr muses, to be more worried about the safety of the kid who wants to kill him than his own hide. Although that isn't really fair - all of them would have been concerned. Just not as concerned.
> 
> Ten minutes later, the pair is freed entirely. Piotr picks up the limp form of Alex X and Jean and Ororo each slid one of Scott's arms around their necks (much to Henry's feigned jealousy and indignation) and guides him back inside to the medical room. Bobby's offer of instant ice packs is gently turns down - he just doesn't have that fine control yet.
> 
> Even though the trio is behind him, Piotr knows by the muttered exclamation that Scott has looked up at the hole in the side of the mansion.
> 
> The Professor is indeed waiting for them when they arrive. Alex X is strapped (gently) onto a bed and Scott is guided to the X-ray machine.
> 
> "I wonder if you've been exposed to enough radiation tonight to just check your bones by turning the light off and waiting for you to glow in the dark," Henry muses aloud as he waits for the films to develop. "Which does beg another question: it's understandable that Alex was unaffected by your little adventure. But why weren't you?"
> 
> The unspoken question, of course, was directed not at Scott, but at Xavier. Xavier, who had let his lieutenant stay at ground zero for what he knew would be some sort of explosion (even if it was only meant metaphorically) while he himself hid out in the hallway. They all knew Alex X was going to manifest his mutant powers soon - imminently, according to the Professor. So why had Xavier let someone who is secretly making out a list of what he wants for his nineteenth birthday face that alone?
> 
> Piotr doesn't know at what point in his relatively-brief-but-increasingly-bizarre life it was that he learned the difference between silences, meaningful silences, and silences that really aren't because of telepathic communication. But he knew this is the last of the three. Xavier's talking to Scott.
> 
> Scott, who's now sitting on a bed with his legs dangling down. He attempts to slouch but is given a sharp reminder by his (fractured, but not displaced) rib that that isn't such a good idea. Sitting up ramrod straight, looking very much like he does indeed have a stick in a place most people wouldn't want one, Scott nonetheless manages to sigh almost pathetically.
> 
> "I suspected he wouldn't be," Xavier says, sensing -- correctly -- that the unspoken question is more important. "It was safer for Scott to be there than anyone else. Including me."
> 
> "But how cou..."
> 
> "You know why, Henry," Scott speaks up, voice pitched low and raw. "Because a link between powers always follows a genetic link."
> 
> "A genetic link?" Jean asks sharply. She has been giving Alex the once-over, channeling some physician - pediatrician, even - to check for problems that the x-ray might not have picked up. "You're _related_ to this creep?" She puts down the stethoscope she had been wearing. "But you don't have any living family! Except... oh! Alex. Christ."
> 
> The silence is broken by Ororo. "Okay, for those of us who are neither telepaths nor Henry - who _really_ has to learn about gossip and when to spread it - what's going on?"
> 
> "Alex is my brother," Scott sighs, trying to lie down from a sitting position without curving his back. It is a graceless move resembling a tree toppling.
> 
> "And you didn't want to tell us because..." Piotr asks. Not angry. Hurt, a little. Because he hangs out with Scott - more so than any of the others these days with Jean being post-Wolverine and Henry running off with Ororo and Bobby being fifteen going on twelve. Because he resents the implication that he can't handle the news and still do his job.
> 
> "Because Alex just found out and you saw what he did," Scott replies slowly. Xavier's shot him up with painkillers and they must be kicking in. "Now consider our team's general inability to keep our mouths shut and imagine that happening at any point during our retrieval."
> 
> It's not the whole answer - Piotr rather suspects that his own ideas are probably closer to the truth - but it's unassailable logic. Alex - and he's now 'Alex' in Piotr's mind, not 'Alex X' or 'the FoH cretin' or a hundred other variations on that theme that really don't translate well from the Russian even in his own thoughts - could have killed people. He could have blown their cover - not to mention their car - right to hell.
> 
> So Piotr just nods and shrugs. There's not much else to say. Or anyone who will answer - Scott's starting to look droopy and Xavier's about to push all of them out of the med lab. They can gossip among themselves later.
> 
> * * *
> 
>   



	6. Saving Cain: Chapter Five

* * *

Saving Cain: Chapter 5

* * *

> After five-and-three-quarter years of getting up before dawn to trek into Manhattan to go to school, Alex was used to waking up tired. You can doze on the subway, but that doesn't make up for the lack of sleep.
> 
> After two-plus years of membership in the Friends of Humanity, Alex was used to waking up sore. Sometimes there's more physical activity at a rally than just giving speeches.
> 
> Neither set of experiences prepared Alex for when he slowly regained consciousness. Groggy and aching, the blissful darkness faded to light and the all-consuming silence gave way to a sterile quiet.
> 
> Alex's first thought was one of confusion. An attempt to roll over met with resistance - lambskin padded resistance to be sure, but even only half-conscious, Alex knew he wasn't going anywhere. That realization quickly begat another and full alertness came quickly on its heels.
> 
> Eyes wide open despite the fluorescent brightness, Alex reveled in the sharpness of the pain and blinked away the tears meant to soothe. The burning in his eyes was a welcome contrast to the dull ache that encompassed him. It was almost (but not enough) to distract him from the burning in his soul.
> 
> There was a clock on the wall. Five to four in the morning. Alex laughed bitterly, an aborted sound that made his chest ache even more. Twenty-three hours ago, he had woken up to go to school. There had been no warning that that had been his last morning as a normal high school kid (as normal as any kid in his geek school was). No warning that it had been his last morning as a human being.
> 
> Self-loathing usually was a matter of an individual coming to hate what he was. But what happened when you suddenly became that which you hate?
> 
> Twenty-three hours.
> 
> The tears came again, but they weren't there as balm to hurting eyes. And they couldn't calm a wounded heart. Alex felt like his world had crumbled beneath him. It _had_ crumbled beneath him.
> 
> There were very few unchangeables in Alex Summers's life. In sixteen years, he had had to change parents, change homes, change siblings, change schools, change identities, change lives. The Friends of Humanity were all about fighting change.
> 
> He had gone from being secure in his place in his family to the tenuous role of rent-a-kid. There was nothing tenuous about his membership in the Friends of Humanity.
> 
> After all, what were the odds that he'd suddenly stop being human?
> 
> Twenty-three hours.
> 
> Alex craned his neck and looked around. Behind him, he could see another bed. If he arched even further, he could see... Scott. Lying on his back, looking uncomfortable even asleep. If he was asleep. Alex couldn't see anything above the chest.
> 
> "You're up," Scott said quietly.
> 
> Alex cursed mildly to himself. He hadn't gotten friendly with his own thoughts yet and now he had to deal with Scott. [And when had he become Scott, not Cyclops?] "Apparently."
> 
> "You okay?" Scott asked, sitting up gently and failing to stifle a groan.
> 
> "It depends. Am I supposed to ignore the fact that I'm trussed up like an extra from 'One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest' or not?"
> 
> With a hiss of pain, Scott swung his legs over the side of his bed and hopped down. Coming over to Alex, he looked down.
> 
> At least Alex thought he was looking down. It was hard to tell with the visor.
> 
> "Don't try anything stupid," Scott warned as he reached across and undid the restraints.
> 
> Alex immediately raised his arms to stretch and made incidental contact with Scott's arm as it retreated. Scott sucked in his breath sharply.
> 
> "Like that, you mean?" he asked sourly. Apparently he wasn't the only one who had had a rough night.
> 
> "Yeah," Scott replied tiredly and moved to sit down in a nearby chair. "So are you all right now?"
> 
> "I feel like I fell under a subway," Alex replied, absolutely not wanting to get into any deeper issues. Certainly not with the poster child for well-adjusted mutancy.
> 
> "You must have outputted enough energy to power a small city," Scott replied calmly. As if that explained everything.
> 
> "Is that what it was?" Sarcasm to cover up the curiosity. Because, truth be told, Alex didn't have a clue about what went on. He remembered the pain, remembered the blinding light and the noise. And then nothing.
> 
> "Yeah," Scott replied, either missing or ignoring the acid dripping from his words. "I don't know what sort of energy, though. I'm sure the Professor will be able to tell you later."
> 
> "He's not here now running tests?" Pulling gently on the electrodes running from his chest to a machine. "I'd think he'd be dying to know what my little moment of freakdom is."
> 
> Scott gestured with his chin toward the machine and the electrodes. "That's just to check your vitals." He pauses, as if considering something.
> 
> "You blew a crater in the mansion," he continued with a wry frown. "I think Xavier knows enough about your mutant powers to be able to wait for the rest until morning."
> 
> "I did?" Surprise. It shouldn't be surprising, not with the makings of an explosion that he remembers, not with the pain he felt then or the pain he was in now. But it just seemed... surreal that all of that is connected to him. Came from him, in fact.
> 
> "Yeah," Scott affirmed. He's tired, Alex can tell. Whether that's because he, too, just got up or whether it's because he never went to sleep - Alex didn't think Xavier would really leave him unattended - he didn't know. "It was dark, so I didn't get a real good look at how bad the damage was, but... We came in through the back door when we came back inside."
> 
> "_Back_ inside?"
> 
> "You busted out," Scott explained.
> 
> "And I took you with me," Alex finished. Not wanting to think about how awful a pattern was forming that all of his life-changing moments seem to be prefaced by his falling to earth with his brother.
> 
> "Yeah."
> 
> Alex didn't really want to care if Scott's all right, so he made it easy on himself and didn't ask. Scott was probably okay. He was Cyclops, after all. Able leader of a band of mutant vigilantes. He could fall out of buildings and be fine.
> 
> "Can I see?"
> 
> "The mess? Maybe later," Scott replied. "You're hooked up to the monitors and I don't want to screw them up by trying to unhook you."
> 
> "It's not that hard, Scott," Alex said, emphasizing his use of the other's name, hoping to get further with the familiar. He reaches for an electrode stuck to his chest. "You unstick..."
> 
> "Don't," Scott warned, batting Alex's hand away. "It'll trigger an alarm."
> 
> "Like a jailbreak?" Alex asked bitterly. Nice for Scott -- Cyclops -- to try and pretend that he wasn't a prisoner here.
> 
> "Quit with the paranoia crap, Alex," Scott said, clearly irritated. "This is standard medical equipment. The ones in the hospital sound an alarm, too. You just had a pretty... extreme... experience. Let's just make sure that your body handled it all right, okay? You're not going to be here longer than you have to be. Nobody is."
> 
> 'Nobody is,' Alex repeated to himself. Another reminder of where he was. In the bosom of the beast, the heart of the enemy's camp. It should provide pleasure to see the proof that the X-Men suffered casualties, too. But even if this was the equivalent of the FoH first-aid station, it wasn't. It was a mini hospital, complete with fancy equipment and what looked to be all of the tools required for everything from stitches to open heart surgery. Amazing what a little money can do.
> 
> "Here as in the clinic or here as in X-Men headquarters?" Alex asked.
> 
> "Both. Either," Scott replied, looking slightly amused by the question if Alex is reading the quirk of his lips correctly. "Nobody's in the X-Men who doesn't want to be."
> 
> "I don't want to be."
> 
> "No shit, Sherlock," Scott said with a chuckle, completely undermining Alex's defiant tone. "This wasn't a recruitment mission."
> 
> "Then what was it?" Alex asked, snarling.
> 
> "We knew you were about to manifest and figured you'd be safer doing it here than at FoH headquarters," Scott answered. He ran his fingers through spiky hair.
> 
> Alex was about to spring a sarcastic-yet-witty retort when Scott shook his head to silence him.
> 
> "You don't care about yourself, we know that," Scott said. "But you blew up a chunk of a very well constructed house, Alex. Had you done this at your home, at your school, even at your FoH clubhouse... You would have annihilated anyone in the immediate vicinity. Don't you have enough innocent blood on your hands?"
> 
> "Innocent blood?" Alex repeated, incredulousness warring with rage at the accusation. "I've just become the perfect example of why the Sentinels are necessary. Why the FoH platform is the only right one. Mutants are a threat even when they don't mean to be."
> 
> "Stop talking in the third person, Alex," Scott replied testily. "You're a mutant. It's 'we', not 'they.'"
> 
> There was nothing to be said about that. Scott was right. But Alex was too pissed off to just let the matter drop. "If I'm free to leave, then I can just go, right?"
> 
> "What?" Scott asked tiredly. "If you're so concerned about mutants being a threat, why would you go out into the world when you don't even know how your powers work? Besides, where would you go?"
> 
> "Home?" Alex replied. He was playing devil's advocate. He knew he couldn't go home. His foster parents were liberal sorts, eager to help out the less fortunate (by taking in a blond-haired, blue-eyed amnesiac little boy from an orphanage in mild-mannered Nebraska) and sorely disappointed in his choice of politics. But just as they had spurned the notion of taking on the responsibility of the mildly brain-damaged brother of their newest project - charity only went so far; they couldn't devote that kind of attention to a child who wasn't even theirs - Alex didn't want to know just how far their professed acceptance of mutants went. They weren't bad people, but they had put money and effort into raising Alex and he really didn't want to face their denial of him when he so sorely heartsick by himself. That, and...
> 
> "If you go home, how long will it be before the FoH realizes what you are and firebombs the house?" Scott asked, yawning despite the harshness of his tone. "I'm assuming, of course, that the FoH realizes that you were adopted and doesn't kill your family outright so that they don't breed any more abominations."
> 
> Alex didn't miss the slight emphasis on the words 'home' and 'family' and wondered if Scott had known either since the plane crash. Suspected he hasn't.
> 
> "Can we argue about this later?" Scott asked, standing up and gingerly rolling his neck. "I'm too tired to think anymore and the pain killers are starting to wear off. The Professor will be around soon, anyway. He's usually up early."
> 
> Alex let his silence serve as tacit agreement - he was not a little tired himself - and was mildly surprised to see Scott climbing back onto the bed he was lying on before. "Don't you have a room here?"
> 
> "Yeah. Upstairs," Scott replied, lying down awkwardly.
> 
> "Why aren't you going to it, then?" Alex asked. He knew the reason was that they didn't trust him alone and that they thought he'd either escape or destroy something. He just wanted to see if Scott would say so.
> 
> "Because being alone in a hospital bed sucks," Scott said quietly but emphatically.
> 
> Alex furrowed his brow, glad that Scott couldn't see him. That wasn't the answer he was expecting.
> 
> "Is it all right if I turn out the light?" Scott asked. "Professor Xavier will turn it back on when he shows up, but for the time being, if we're just going to sleep..."
> 
> "Yeah, go ahead."
> 
> Alex doesn't know why he's surprised to see Scott fiddle with his visor and shoot a tiny red beam at the light switch across the room from both of them, thrusting the room into near-darkness. Theoretically, there had to have been practical uses for even freakish mutations such as Scott's.
> 
> Alex fell asleep wondering if there could be any practical applications to whatever he did. Maybe a career in demolition.
> 
> * * *
> 
>   



	7. Saving Cain: Chapter Six

* * *

Saving Cain: Chapter 6

* * *

> Piotr, Henry, and Ororo are already sitting in the kitchen by the time Jean wanders down to breakfast. Morning events have been cancelled, so there is no reason to expect to see Bobby (who is still very much in that early teenaged mode of going to sleep at 3AM just because he can) much before lunch.
> 
> But Scott wasn't there. And that made it odd, Jean decides. Scott was always up before her. Always.
> 
> She knew where Scott was - downstairs in the clinic, still asleep along with his brother. And that only added to the strangeness. She'd known about Alex -- at least, about the theoretical existence _somewhere_ of an Alex Summers -- for a few years; she had been there when Xavier had helped Scott investigate his family. There had been no records of what had happened to Alex once he'd disappeared into foster care -- the records had called them Alex X and Scott X, the younger brother unable to provide any sort of identifying information beyond his comatose brother's first name. There had been no records... or the Professor had simply said that there were none. She understood the logic if that were the case -- Scott would have tried to contact Alex and Alex would have tried to kill him. And Scott, desperate for a family, might not have fought back hard enough to save himself.
> 
> "The coffee's drinkable this morning," Ororo says by way of greeting to Jean. "We think Xavier made it."
> 
> She's sitting next to Henry and Piotr's across from them and it's Piotr who re-arranges the newspaper he's spread out over the breakfast table so that Jean can find space.
> 
> The coffee pot is still mostly full - Scott's the real reason they have had a twelve-cup carafe even when it was just the three of them. Jean's still feeling lazy in that just-gotten-up way and uses her telekinesis to bring both a mug from the cabinet and the whole milk from the fridge.
> 
> "It's... not even diner coffee," she half-sputters after her first sip. It's weak, beyond weak, and with her usual amount of milk, it's barely got a taste at all. "Brown water."
> 
> Piotr chuckles, although Jean's still shielding and isn't sure if he's amused by her or by the box scores he's currently squinting over.
> 
> "You _like_ Scott's rocket fuel?" Henry asks, surprised. Scott's not a coffee snob, but he makes it strong.
> 
> "I've gotten used to it," Jean replies, her face still screwed into a mask of distaste. She had initially groused about the industrial strength brew Scott would produce each morning, but since doing anything about it meant getting up earlier than him, Jean had instead learned to add more milk. "This is just a waste of good beans. I'm going to put this in a thermos for you wimps and make something closer to real coffee. Scott's going to be pissy enough this morning."
> 
> Nobody comments on Jean's concern for Scott's happiness and for that she is somewhat grateful. Things are no longer awkward between the two of them, but Jean understands that the others don't understand the dynamic between her and Scott well enough to be comfortable acknowledging it yet.
> 
> "I'm not having any more, so you might as well pour it out if the guys don't mind," Ororo says. "Unless... we _could_ turn it into ice cream." They have an ice cream maker, one that still gets some usage because Bobby still has issues when it comes to cooling things down gradually. He makes a great orange juice Popsicle, though.
> 
> "Good idea," Jean agrees and a plastic container floats toward her.
> 
> Ten minutes later, a new pot of coffee is ready. Piotr brings Jean (who is most of the way through her bowl of Lucky Charms) a cup along with his own and she is pleased to note that he's even put the right amount of milk in it without having to ask. Piotr's sneaky-observant like that and it still weirds her out that he can be headblind and still see so much of what goes on.
> 
> "So now that we've baited the trap," Henry begins, gesturing toward the coffee pot, "Where's our Fearless Leader?"
> 
> "Downstairs," Jean replies around a mouthful of marshmallows. She still tends to leave them to the end, eating the floating cereal bits first if she can. "The two of them are still out."
> 
> "Scott's sleeping in?" Henry chuckles. "Although he certainly deserves to do so."
> 
> "But he has in the past as well and has never indulged himself," Piotr counters.
> 
> "He didn't sleep very much last night," Xavier says from the entryway as he wheels himself into the kitchen. Piotr hops up and re-fills Xavier's coffee mug and the group at the table fail to swallow their amusement as the Professor stares at his mug strangely after his first sip.
> 
> "The painkillers didn't last as long as they should have and Scott stayed up for a while to talk to Alex," Xavier finishes.
> 
> "I can't believe Scott's got a _brother_," Ororo muses aloud. "Let alone one who..." she trails off, but the meaning is understood.
> 
> "It does present an interesting study in the nature-versus-nurture argument," Henry muses.
> 
> "More than we might imagine," Xavier agrees. "Alex was not raised by mutant haters. He is, in fact, the product of a rather liberal environment both academically and personally."
> 
> "So he's a reactionary?" Piotr asks.
> 
> "After a fashion, I suppose," Xavier answers. "But it's not that clear cut. And I'm afraid that that is why his... re-education... might prove somewhat difficult."
> 
> That was a loaded statement if there ever was one, Jean muses to herself. But a telepathic query is gently rebuffed as the Professor put his travel mug in the slot on the side of his wheelchair and rolls off in the direction of the elevator.
> 
> "Is this where we're supposed to say that we trust the Professor and know that he's only looking out for everyone's best interests?" Ororo asks quietly after Xavier has gone. She looks concerned, as does everyone else. There was an unspoken threat in the Professor's words. An unspoken threat that sounded uncomfortably like something that might have come out of Magneto's mouth.
> 
> "I don't think the Professor meant it like that," Henry says, not with his usual bravado. "Embracing our differences was our salvation, more or less. It got us here and now. Which, chasing down bad guys aside, is a good deal better off than where we were before. Alex was doing pretty well before. He has less reason to embrace... change."
> 
> "Just life or death," Piotr murmurs.
> 
> The quartet stays in the kitchen for a while, a comfortable silence slowly appearing out of the nervous quiet. Eventually, however, Jean goes off to shower and Piotr wants to read the newspapers online and Henry has to see if the battery re-charger he built for back-up for the Blackbird is working and Ororo has to stop procrastinating and finish reading the Kant that she'd been putting off because yes, the Professor probably will quiz her on it this afternoon. And so the kitchen is empty by the time that Bobby stumbles in.
> 
> Bobby makes a face at the mostly-full coffee pot on his way to the fridge and grabs the orange juice and milk and fills up a glass with the first and drenches his Oreos cereal with the other and opens up the newspaper to read about the Mets.
> 
> He's still sitting there, the last of the cereal turning the milk an ugly shade of gray when Scott appears.
> 
> "Omigod, I'm up earlier than Cyclops," Bobby mock-gasps as Scott gets his special mug (a 24-ounce job with Burne-Jones's "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid" on it that comes with its own cover; Jean got it for him from Macy's the other Christmas) out of the cabinet and pours himself coffee.
> 
> "Ha, hah," Scott grumbles and rolls his neck. He has showered down in the gym and put on the clean clothes that someone (probably Piotr) brought down for him, but it still doesn't feel quite right. "Did Jean finish the Lucky Charms?"
> 
> "Dunno," Bobby says with a shrug. "They were all gone by the time I showed up. It's almost lunchtime, though."
> 
> "So why are you eating breakfast?" Scott asks as he decides not to hunt down the cereal. They are running low on Lucky Charms and Jean probably left four marshmallows in the box so that she doesn't have to be the one to finish it and thus be the one who has to go get more.
> 
> "Because I'm a growing boy," Bobby replies cheerfully. "The Professor says I should keep up my strength. So I am. Food energy."
> 
> Scott yawns and shakes his head and takes away all of the newspapers (Bobby's finished with the sports sections) from the table, tucking them under his arm as he picks up his coffee with one hand and an orange with the other and heads for the back porch.
> 
> Setting up his spread on the patio table, conscious of the disaster area a few yards to his right, Scott is almost basking in the sunlight of the surprisingly warm day by the time Ororo shows up.
> 
> "Can I join you?" she asks, gesturing to the chair opposite Scott with her book. "It's too nice to be inside and I have to finish this."
> 
> "Sure," Scott replies, eyeing her book. "Kant. Ugh."
> 
> "Xavier made you read it?" Ororo isn't sure how the Professor divvies up assignments. Not everyone gets the same material and not in the same order.
> 
> "Everyone does," Scott says after a sip of coffee. "Apparently the Professor has an affinity for the categorical imperative."
> 
> "Ah. So you can help me with it?"
> 
> "I Kant remember too much apart from the categorical imperative," Scott replies, failing to keep the smile off his face at the bad pun.
> 
> "I'm going back inside," Ororo sighs dramatically, feigning irritation. "At least there I only have to deal with Piotr arguing with his history book."
> 
> Piotr's nominally finished with classes -- he took and passed a GED before the incident with Weapon X -- but pursues his own studies now, with the Professor's occasional guidance. Ororo can't imagine wanting to study anything school-like if it wasn't mandatory -- she doesn't plan on picking up another textbook the minute Xavier tells her she can stop. That the Professor suspects this and keeps postponing her 'graduation' has crossed her mind.
> 
> "Stay, stay," Scott says. "I'll be good."
> 
> "I guess this means you're doing okay," Ororo ventures after a pause.
> 
> Scott shrugs, then winces at the reminder that his body is bruised and even broken. "There's nothing else I can do," he says and Ororo can sense the regret. Scott is not the passive type when it comes to business. "The next step has to be his if we're going to get anywhere. I can't force him to accept this."
> 
> "The Professor can," Ororo replies. She's still a little disturbed by Xavier's earlier comment.
> 
> "He could, but he won't," Scott answers. "He'll make sure Alex doesn't hurt any of us, but... he won't. It wouldn't do any good - whatever he did wouldn't stick. Alex is smart. Really, really smart. Besides, he'd figure out something was wrong if he's a member of the Friends of Humanity one day and an X-Man the next."
> 
> Ororo is only partially comforted by this logical reasoning, but suspects her own reluctance comes from a more personal concern. Alex would notice. But would she?
> 
> Something moves out of the corner of her eye and Ororo looks up to the gaping hole in the mansion. "Look. Alex and Bobby are at the opening."
> 
> Scott turns around gingerly and leans forward. They can see Alex moving around the edge of the building and can catch glimpses of Bobby behind him. "Alex said he wanted to see things for himself. I'm hoping this will help him come to terms with things instead of freaking him out further."
> 
> "How was he this morning?" Ororo asks.
> 
> "Quiet. Quieter. He's not going to talk much. He still thinks we're the enemy."
> 
> "Even you?" The book is now closed and resting on the table.
> 
> "Especially me," Scott returns with a sigh. "I'm not only the symbol of how screwed up his present and future are, but also how messed up his past is."
> 
> "It'll get better," Ororo says, trying to sound sure. She doesn't know though. An only child, she has no experience with siblings, let alone long-lost ones. But if Scott's going to venture any sort of personal information at all - Scott, who is so protective of his privacy - then Ororo is going to do her best to justify the confidence.
> 
> "I hope so," Scott says.
> 
> Alex must have noticed that they were there because Ororo can see him leaning out and waving. She's about to make a comment at how cheerful Alex seemed when pure horror replaces every thought she's considering.
> 
> Alex has jumped.
> 
> The next moments move like hours for Scott, in a slow motion he doesn't think he'll ever forget.
> 
> Scott runs all out, Ororo right behind, but knows that he can't catch Alex. The winds are still blowing from where Ororo tried to slow his descent, but she didn't react fast enough or with enough control. The only thing that prevented Alex from splattering on the ground after his almost thirty foot drop was Bobby having encased him in a snow cocoon.
> 
> Alex is sprawled indelicately in the blood-spattered snow (it was enough to keep the fall from being fatal, but not enough to prevent injury) when Scott gets to him. Mindful of spinal injury or broken bones, he doesn't try to move his brother. Instead he kneels by Alex's head, brushing hair away from his forehead.
> 
> Silence falls over the group (and by now it is one as Bobby has raced down the stairs and Henry, Piotr, and Jean have materialized.
> 
> "How could you let this happen?" Scott finally asks in a whisper. He looks up to face Xavier, who has wheeled out onto the patio. "He can't shield. He couldn't have hidden his intentions from you. How could you let him _do_ this?"
> 
> Scott sounds broken, sounds betrayed even, and Jean can't help but feel for him as she gently lifts Alex with her TK and moves him onto a stretcher for Piotr and Henry to carry back into the house.
> 
> "He wasn't thinking about this," Xavier replies quietly. Sure of his own innocence even as he knows that there is no way he can be truly innocent. "He was distraught, he was upset, but... not this."
> 
> The answer was of no comfort to any of them.
> 
> * * *
> 
>   



	8. Saving Cain: Chapter Seven

* * *

Saving Cain: Chapter 7

* * *

> "I know you're awake, Alex," Scott said.
> 
> Alex didn't care. He wasn't going to open his eyes and face Scott after this latest defeat.
> 
> When he was in eighth grade, a junior from his school who couldn't deal with the pressures of keeping his grades up and had been disappointed with his SAT scores had jumped off of his apartment building roof. It had only been three stories and he had taken a whole day to die, but he did.
> 
> Suicide was tricky that way. It was like carrying out the death penalty - something you wanted to get right the first time. Improperly tied nooses, dull blades on the guillotine, a too-small axe... history was filled with botched death. Alex, being a student of history, was attentive to such details as a member of the Friends of Humanity's strategy committee. Apparently, his planning abilities did not carry over to his mutant life.
> 
> "What the fuck were you thinking?" Scott asked, sounding somewhat between pissed off and curious. "Why are you so set on sticking to principles that it didn't even make sense to hold when you thought you were 'normal'? Is being a mutant so disgusting to you that you'd rather die than try it out?"
> 
> Alex didn't want to open his eyes and acknowledge Scott's presence, so he had to settle for attempting an internal catalog of injuries. He could move toes and fingers, so there didn't appear to be severe spinal injuries. The pain was all over, but he couldn't really tell much beyond that.
> 
> "You're damned lucky you didn't break anything," Scott continued. Alex wondered if Scott had noticed him wiggling his digits. "You're also probably lucky that you didn't get hypothermia and die from Bobby's attempt to save you, but he did save you. You scared the shit out of him, you know. He blames himself for you jumping. He thinks _I_ blame him for you jumping. He shouldn't, but he does. So if you're going to ignore me, you should at least tell Bobby that there was nothing he could have done to stop you. Because we both know that's the truth even if he doesn't."
> 
> Alex continued to lie still and Scott didn't say anything else. Eventually, he fell back asleep and when he awoke, Scott wasn't there. Marvel Girl was, however.
> 
> "Stay still," she hissed as she concentrated on taping the gauze over his eyebrow.
> 
> Alex watched as Marvel Girl - Jean, Bobby had said her name was - picked up a small spray bottle.
> 
> "This is peroxide, so it's going to sting," she warned before spraying a spot on his chest.
> 
> And it did. Enough so that Alex sucked in air between his teeth and released it slowly.
> 
> "You don't even care what you're giving up, do you?" Jean asked as she finished with that wound and went on to the next. There were no broken bones, but Alex was apparently a mess of abrasions. "Does anything register with you? Not Scott, obviously. And you don't even care about yourself either. What do you care about?"
> 
> "Humanity," Alex whispered.
> 
> "Well guess what, hot stuff? They officially stopped caring about you as of Tuesday night," Jean retorted sharply. "The line between charity and stupidity isn't that fine. You keep trying to off yourself and you're doing them a favor they wouldn't do you. Scott keeps telling everyone you're smart. You go to a school for smart kids. Time to act like one."
> 
> The rest of Jean's nursing duties passed in silence except for Jean's quiet requests for him to move or shift so that she could continue to work. And then she left him.
> 
> Scott came back an hour or so later carrying lunch on a tray and a couple of books.
> 
> "Alex, stop acting like a baby. You were cute then. You're not cute now," he said testily as he set down the tray at the foot of the bed. "I'm not asking you to talk to me. Just sit up so I can leave you your tray. It's soup and I don't want to make a mess."
> 
> Alex was about to growl out that he wasn't hungry when his stomach, not wanting to risk his brain being too spiteful, decided to loudly announce otherwise.
> 
> Scott waited patiently for Alex to move the bed into a sitting position before he set down the tray. There was soup and some sort of soft bakery bread and milk and applesauce.
> 
> "Your jaw is pretty bruised and, since you're not talking, nobody knew if you'd be able to eat hard food," Scott explained without prompting. "If you're fine, you can have whatever it is we're having for dinner."
> 
> Scott left him then and Alex began to eat. His jaw was very sore and chewing (the soup was some sort of thick chicken and vegetable combo) was done gently. He finished everything on the tray, however.
> 
> The books were within reach and, with nothing else to do but stare at the walls, Alex reached for them. One was Umberto Eco's _The Name of the Rose_ and the other was a collection of Michel de Montaigne's essays. Not trusting his attention span, Alex went for Montaigne purely because the essays were shorter than the fat novel.
> 
> He had completely lost track of time when the door swished open. Xavier rolled in and Alex acknowledged his presence by watching him.
> 
> "Montaigne," Xavier said with a nod. "I thought it would be appropriate, if not necessarily subtle. Did you study his work in school?"
> 
> Alex debated whether or not to answer. He really didn't have any reason not to apart from sheer rudeness. If this was yet another attempt at bringing him over to the cause, Alex didn't have to make it a successful one.
> 
> "Eighth grade. I don't remember much of it."
> 
> Xavier nodded. "The ideas he introduces have a strong resonance with me, more so than you might imagine, although I suspect that most people would feel the same were the essays more widely read. But it is with Montaigne himself that I thought you might... find your own resonance. There's a short biography in the front of the volume if I recall correctly."
> 
> Alex checked and there was. He was also most amused to think that the mutant version of Watchtower was one of the great authors of French literature.
> 
> "One of the most fascinating parts of the Essais is that Montaigne never finished them," Xavier continued conversationally. "Oh, there is a beginning and an end, but Montaigne never finished _editing_ them. He wanted them to be a current portrait of himself and his state of mind. But - and this is an important but - he never erased what he had already written. The old words were his past and that could never be erased. Only incorporated into a new and ever-changing whole."
> 
> "You're right," Alex said sarcastically. "Not subtle at all."
> 
> "Be that as it may," Xavier replied with a smile and a shrug. "Think about it. And think about Montaigne's biography."
> 
> "It's not like I have anything else to do, right?"
> 
> "If it were your wish, I'm sure Bobby would be willing to bring in a television and plug in his video game. Playstation, I think it is," Xavier said, waving his hand as if the whole concept of video games was too abstract for him. "But that's not your speed. At least not all day. If you have a request for a different book, I'm sure someone can get it for you."
> 
> "How long am I supposed to be here?" Alex asked, waving his hand around and pretending the action didn't hurt like hell.
> 
> "You would have been re-located to a room of your own had you not... Had you not been so rash," Xavier sighed. "As it stands, you should probably be in bed another two to three days. As you have no doubt noticed by this point, your injuries are miraculously minor considering what happened, but nonetheless significant."
> 
> Alex nodded. He had also learned that the clinic door was locked at all times and there was very little chance of escape so long as he was down here. Not that he'd get far crawling, which was all he might be capable of right now.
> 
> "Alex, as a favor to no one but yourself, take this time to think about your options and your future," Xavier said after a long pause. "You are a mutant. You are not a menace to society."
> 
> "Aren't I?" Alex asked with a bitterness that surprised him. "I'm going to explode again. What if I'm near somebody? How do I live anywhere when I could vaporize my surroundings at any given moment? Try getting _that_ past a co-op board. Should I live alone, never letting anyone within my blast zone? That's not a life."
> 
> "No, it's not," Xavier agreed quietly. "And it won't be yours, either. We'll figure something out."
> 
> "How?" Alex knew he sounded frantic and probably a little hysterical.
> 
> Xavier rolled closer to the bed. "Do you see that machine, the one next to the EKG monitor?" he asked, pointing. "Your power has something to do with radiation. That's a modified Geiger counter. I've been testing radiation levels. Your powers are linked to your brother's. Scott is an energy converter, so it stands to reason that you are as well. All we have to do is figure out what sorts of energy to block and how."
> 
> Alex didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say. He didn't understand how Scott's power worked - as far as he knew, Scott always was shooting his optic blasts - so he had no concept of how his own might work. He had never wanted to understand it. He just wanted it gone.
> 
> "The Friends of Humanity like to draw a comparison between mutation and disease," Xavier said after a moment. "But it is really a gift. Like eyesight. Some people need glasses for reading, others for distance, and some for both. But nobody puts out their eyes solely because they don't have 20/20 vision. They go to the optometrist and get glasses."
> 
> "But what happens if you can't make everything all right?" Alex asked, not sure if he was being skeptical or scared.
> 
> "Then you hold on and hope that someday someone will," Xavier replied firmly. "One of these days, I hope to get up out of this wheelchair. But my life hasn't stopped in the interim. Your life shouldn't stop in the interim."
> 
> Alex didn't say anything and eventually Xavier turned his chair around and headed for the door.
> 
> "You come from strong stock, Alexander Summers," Xavier said as he stopped and turned around to face Alex again. "In that way you are no different than your brother. Even if you will not learn from him."
> 
> And with that, he wheeled himself out and left Alex to battle his demons by himself.
> 
> About a half-hour later, one of the others came and took his tray. Storm, whose real name Alex had yet to learn. She asked him if he needed anything, wanted anything, and whether he thought he could handle salad with dinner. He bit back his more sarcastic replies and merely asked for something to drink. Salad, he decided, was a little much for his sore jaw.
> 
> After Storm came and went again, depositing a glass and an insulated carafe of apple juice, Alex flipped absently through the Montaigne before closing his eyes. There was a low-level painkiller being fed to him intravenously. Not quite a morphine drip and nothing strong enough to screw around with his ability to think clearly, but enough to take the edge off of pain that should have been at worst unbearable and at best distracting. If he let it, however, it could make him a little drowsy. And Alex wanted the peace of semi-consciousness for a while.
> 
> * * *
> 
>   



	9. Saving Cain: Chapter Eight

* * *

Saving Cain: Chapter 8

* * *

> It was halfway through the third period when the Professor came into the entertainment room to ask Piotr if he'd go down and check on Alex after the game.
> 
> After the Devils finished knocking the Rangers around, Piotr turns off the television - Scott usually watches at least part of a game with him, but he left after the second period claiming exhaustion (which Piotr mentally translates from Scott-speak into 'I want to go brood by myself now') and the room is otherwise deserted.
> 
> Making a pit stop in the dining room, Piotr goes downstairs and into the clinic. Alex is sitting up, seemingly buried under all of the day's newspapers.
> 
> "You look like your brother like that," Piotr says as he sets down the bottle of vodka and two shotglasses on the table by Alex's bed. "Or you would, if Scott ever took his newspapers to bed."
> 
> The effect of his words does not surprise Piotr. Alex promptly collects all of the papers and put them in a neat pile. Piotr suspects that Alex would do anything to not be like Scott right now.
> 
> "What are you doing here?" Alex asks, obviously wanting to be surly but still curious about the liquor and two glasses.
> 
> "What does it look like? It is my turn to baby-sit you," Piotr replies, pulling over a chair and sitting down.
> 
> "I haven't had a babysitter all day," Alex responds.
> 
> "Not in the same room, no," Piotr agrees, then points to the camera in the corner. "You don't think we'd leave you unsupervised with all of this equipment, do you? Lots of knives here, you know."
> 
> If Alex is surprised, he doesn't look it. The camera isn't hidden, just built into the architecture of the room. He had probably noticed it.
> 
> "So I get personal attention now?" Alex asks, sarcasm winning over curiosity.
> 
> "You spend too much time with yourself, you get crazy," Piotr explains with a shrug. "You've been crazy enough since you've been here. You need company."
> 
> "What says I want you for company?"
> 
> "What do you tell a five hundred pound bear that's sitting on your couch?" Piotr asks in response. "To sit wherever it wants."
> 
> Alex just stares at him.
> 
> "It's a joke, yes?" Piotr asks.
> 
> "I think your delivery needs work," Alex finally says with a frown. "Besides, you're not five hundred pounds."
> 
> "I can be," Piotr corrects. "But that would wreck the chair."
> 
> Alex fails to hide a wry smile. "I guess so. Are you here so that Xavier can watch me interact with other mutants?" he asks, gesturing toward the camera, "Or is this like being at the zoo where you get to sit up close with the animals?"
> 
> "I don't know where the Professor is," Piotr admits, although the thought that he might be watching has crossed his mind. "And you are a very uninteresting animal to sit and watch. You just lie there and feel sorry for yourself. At least when Bobby watches Jerry Springer, the people throw chairs and feel sorry for themselves."
> 
> "I'm sorry to disappoint," Alex bit back. "If I thought I could throw a chair, I would."
> 
> "I'm sure," Piotr agrees pleasantly and reaches over to pour himself a shot of vodka. "I suppose I should make polite conversation now. Like you are supposed to do for someone in a hospital. So, how have you been?"
> 
> "Fucking peachy," Alex responds, looking at Piotr like he is a very stupid alien.
> 
> "Good to hear," Piotr says, knocking back his vodka. "Did you enjoy dinner?"
> 
> "Highlight of my evening," Alex retorts.
> 
> "Good. I like it when people like my cooking," Piotr replies with a firm nod, placing his glass back on the small table. "Good vodka. Much better than the crap we used to make at home."
> 
> Alex looks at the bottle. "That's not Russian vodka, is it?"
> 
> "Nyet. It's French," Piotr agrees, picking up the bottle of Grey Goose. "Wins the competitions every year."
> 
> "Who'd have thunk," Alex replies. "I'd have thought you'd be loyal to your native stuff."
> 
> "What loyal? You think they drink Stoli in Russia? Oh, the rich people do, but that stuff gets exported. The vodka that could double as paint thinner, that stays home. This," Piotr emphasizes, gesturing at the bottle he has put back on the table, "By drinking this instead of Stoli, I'm moving on. This is just another example of how we got lied to. How we lied to ourselves."
> 
> "French vodka?" Alex asks, confused.
> 
> "The Communists used to tell us that we were lucky to grow up in Russia," Piotr explains with a sarcastic snort. "It was the best country in the world. In America, the children went hungry and couldn't go to school or to a doctor if they couldn't pay lots of money and people lived in the streets and washed in rivers and fought with everyone. And then the Communists went away. And we found out everything they told us was a lie, everything we believed was a lie."
> 
> "Not all of it," Alex replies.
> 
> "All of it," Piotr emphasizes. "Everything. Our past, our present. All lies. Stalin, Trotsky, Khrushchev. They didn't teach any history in school when I was little. They couldn't. There was no history. We burned the books to keep warm because there was no heat, either."
> 
> "And this comes back to French vodka how?" Alex asks, intrigued.
> 
> "We were taught we did everything the best, that we were the best scientists and the best athletes and the best farmers. So naturally, we made the best vodka, _da_? Well, that was a lie too," Piotr says, pouring himself another glass. "We don't make the best vodka. The French do. At least it's not the Americans, which would be just icing on the cake. But here in this nice house, with the nicest of everything all around me, it would be silly to drink Russian vodka simply because I used to think it was the best when I could have the French vodka that really is so."
> 
> Alex just stares at him.
> 
> "There is no shame in being lied to," Piotr says as he lifts his refilled glass. "The shame comes in choosing the lie over the truth because the truth is unpleasant."
> 
> "And that's obviously what you think I'm doing," Alex says dryly.
> 
> "Perestroika came when I was little, although not as little as I should have been - Siberia is not a trendy kind of place - and the government was suddenly no longer a mystery," Piotr says instead. "The Communists pretended that there was no perestroika. That they could continue on as they always had. And look where it got them. Even in Siberia, they couldn't last long. But," Piotr emphasizes, pointing a finger at Alex, "the men who used to be Communists, the smart ones, they are now something else. They are still in government, but they changed their stripes. They adapted and moved on."
> 
> "So you want me to abandon my principles and become a corrupt politician?" Alex asks with a cough. "I think that French vodka is going to your head already."
> 
> "I'm a Siberian peasant," Piotr scoffs, drinking the liquid in the glass he's been waving around. "My blood is half vodka from birth. I can drink anyone in this country under the table." And then he grew serious. "My point is this: you are feeling sorry for yourself that things aren't how you thought they were. Well, a whole country had to go through what you did. And some of them survived and some of them did not. The ones who did survive were the ones who adapted, who moved on. The politicians are corrupt, yes, but that is not the point. They have accepted that things are different. Not like the others, the ones who lie around and moan and talk about how good it was when the Communists were around."
> 
> "It's not the same. They couldn't accidentally vaporize everything in a ten foot radius," Alex retorts.
> 
> "You are not unique, Sasha," Piotr chuckles. "You are not the only mutant who is scared of their power. You are not the only mutant who could be dangerous. You aren't even the only mutant who wishes they weren't one. But here, here you are being granted an opportunity. You can do what you want and you don't have to live your life with one eye over your shoulder looking for Sentinels. You want to go to Harvard? You can go to Harvard. You want to go work in a car plant in Detroit? You can do that, too. But what do you do instead? You wallow in self-pity and take out your anger on your brother."
> 
> "Ah, I knew there was a point to all of this," Alex says bitterly.
> 
> "You don't realize how much he cares about you, do you?" Piotr asks, genuinely curious. It was one thing if Alex was just being spiteful, but it was another if he was genuinely acting out of ignorance.
> 
> "He doesn't know me. He doesn't know anything about me," Alex replies, frowning. "He's trying to resuscitate the long-dead image he had of his little brother. That's why he's so concerned. He doesn't see me. He sees the little boy that he thinks he let go. He feels some sort of obligation to our parents. He thinks he failed them or something."
> 
> "And so instead of humoring him, you decide to encourage his fears?" Piotr asks, picking up the vodka bottle and pouring into both glasses this time. "That is unnecessarily cruel, don't you think?"
> 
> "Real life is a cruel place," Alex snorts.
> 
> "You are a child, you know nothing of real life. And you are a selfish, stupid child if you think that your brother does not know just how cruel it can be," Piotr says, shaking his head sadly. "Your brother is a good man, a kind man. He cares about you for the child you were, yes, but for the young man you are now. At least that you are some of the times."
> 
> Alex frowns, then reaches for the vodka, idly wondering if it would react badly with his pain medicine.
> 
> "If my brother were to re-appear, I would be happy to see him," Piotr says as he watches Alex down the shot. "I wouldn't push him away simply because he wasn't there when I needed him."
> 
> "You lost your brother?"
> 
> "'Lost' is a good word," Piotr agrees with a nod. "Mikhail disappeared in the protests in Moscow when the Communists tried their coup. Just disappeared. No body to ship home, no sign that he fled the country, nothing. He was there one minute and gone the next."
> 
> "I'm sorry," Alex says.
> 
> "Are you? What if I told you that he was a mutant? Would you be sorry then?"
> 
> Alex took the rebuke silently.
> 
> "I don't know if he was. I don't know if my sister will be," Piotr allows. "But Mikhail is not the issue tonight."
> 
> "No, that would be Scott, apparently," Alex sighs.
> 
> "A little secret for you," Piotr says, leaning forward. "When we found you two, after the explosion, he was protecting you still."
> 
> "What?"
> 
> "You were too self-absorbed to notice how you were barely touched by the blast and how it was Scott who was all bruised and cut up," Piotr accuses mildly. "But when we dug you two out, he was protecting you with his body. Covering your face instead of his own. His visor was all broken."
> 
> Alex furrows his brow, but didn't say anything.
> 
> "It doesn't matter, really, whether you take care of yourself," Piotr says as he stands up. "You will do as you will do. And it does not matter why he tries to protect you, but he does. But try not to get Scott killed the next time you try to be stupid, da?"
> 
> And with that, Piotr drinks the third shot, picks up the bottle and the two glasses and leaves the clinic.
> 
> * * *
> 
>   



	10. Saving Cain: Chapter Nine

* * *

Saving Cain: Chapter 9

* * *

> Alex woke up to the clatter of a metal pan hitting the hard floor.
> 
> "Sorry about that," the Beast said from across the clinic. "I am normally the epitome of grace."
> 
> Alex was too groggy to give much in the way of a response.
> 
> "Shall I summon the bellhop for your breakfast?" the Beast asked. "It's Sunday, so there are pancakes and some strange variety of healthy sausage (if you can accept such an oxymoron) in addition to the usual choices of sugary cereals."
> 
> It had been three days since his failed suicide attempt and Alex could almost manage to sit up without too much pain. "Pancakes?" he croaked.
> 
> "Oh, don't worry," the Beast chuckled, no doubt registering the skepticism on Alex's face. Some of the X-Men cooked better than others. "Your brother made them. They're edible. The sausages aren't half-bad, either. I think they're turkey."
> 
> Alex nodded and the Beast went over to the phone. "One breakfast for our guest, please."
> 
> A few minutes later, Bobby came in with a tray. "I'm supposed to ask if you want any part of the newspaper," he said as he set the tray down. "But Piotr said to give you the Post," he went on, waving the newspaper, "but I was in the middle of an article, so can I finish it while you eat?"
> 
> Alex nodded as he surveyed the tray. "I've worked my way up to getting a fork and knife?" he asked. Up until then, most of his meals had been edible with a spoon, so that had been all he had been given.
> 
> "Eating pancakes with your fingers is not only awkward and messy, but also somewhat lacking in grace," the Beast replied from his workbench on the other side of the clinic. "Right, Bobby?"
> 
> "I was just mopping up the syrup," Bobby sighed and rolled his eyes.
> 
> Alex ate quietly. Bobby finished reading his baseball article quickly and left the newspaper for him, heading upstairs to do whatever it was he did in his spare time. The Beast continued working, his back to Alex, and kept to himself except for the occasional murmur and exhortation.
> 
> "Do you want more coffee?" Alex called over to him after he was done eating. "They sent down a thermos."
> 
> "No thanks," the Beast replied, looking up and over his shoulder at Alex. "Your brother made that as well and if I have any more than my usual six ounces, I won't sleep until next week."
> 
> Alex poured himself a cup from the small thermos and went back to his paper, comfortable in having made the minimum required attempt at social interaction. In the time that he had been bedridden in the clinic, Alex had come to understand how things worked. The more civil he was, the more he was left alone. It was only when he was cranky and surly - which still happened, more than Alex would probably care to admit - that the Professor would come for a visit. Especially when he was cranky and surly in Scott's direction.
> 
> Scott would occasionally show up at non-mealtimes, sometimes with the pretense of bringing him something but oftentimes not. He'd ask how Alex was feeling, whether he needed something, or if there was anything he wanted and he'd be completely unfazed by Alex's more hostile responses. After a while, baiting Scott proved neither productive nor especially amusing, so Alex tended toward monosyllabic answers and pointedly ignoring any attempts at friendly bantering.
> 
> No matter how ill behaved Alex was, however, Scott would still bring him books. Alex had initially thought that Scott was merely ferrying Xavier's picks, but once the Professor had looked with curiosity at some of the books piles on the table and commented on the esotericism of Scott's choices. Since then, Alex had decided that Scott was probably in charge of the fiction selections and while it galled him to a certain extent to be forced to follow his brother's tastes in reading material, there wasn't a whole lot else to do if he didn't want to just read the philosophy that the Professor seemed to favor.
> 
> Right now, however, he was reading a history of the Soviet Union that he had asked for Piotr to bring to him. In general, a visit from Piotr was both his greatest nightmare as well as the high point of his day. Piotr only tended to show up after Alex had mouthed off at Scott and Alex knew that Piotr wasn't going to move on to any other topic of conversation until Alex had admitted that yes, he had been an ass. Piotr did not accept bullshit, something that he normally would have appreciated had he not been the one dealing it out. Whatever argument he put up for why he should be allowed to be hostile (or truculent or ill-mannered in any other way), Piotr would demolish it in neat fashion. It was a game and yet it wasn't - Alex understood that the whole point was to make him look at himself. And he wasn't sure he was ready for that yet.
> 
> "I do believe the proper response is 'Eureka!'," the Beast exclaimed from his bench. Alex looked up from his book, but didn't say anything.
> 
> "Are you not the least bit curious?" Alex was asked. "I just may have figured out how to keep your rather explosive personality in check."
> 
> "So long as it's not a lobotomy," Alex replied, putting down the book. "What is it, a lead suit?"
> 
> "Yes and no," the Beast replied, holding up a piece of cloth. "I think we may be able to keep the threads small enough to keep it from looking like you're dressed in tin foil." He shook the cloth, which moved like cloth and not aluminum wrap. "This works rather well when put through the X-Ray machine. And we've already done some tests for other types of radiation... This could be it, Alex," he said excitedly. "This could be it."
> 
> Alex didn't know whether to get his hopes up. He didn't know whether he _should_ get his hopes up. He had had nothing but time to think about his future - starting with how long he wanted it to last. And while he didn't think that any more attempts to end his life were on the immediate horizon, Alex couldn't help but wonder what sort of future would be possible with the past he had left behind.
> 
> "Of course we'll have to get a whole outfit done," the Beast said, jumping up from his seat and walking toward Alex. "And run a test with that. Send Scott around for a day and see if he gets sick or something."
> 
> "Scott absorbs radiation?" Alex had been told that Scott converted energy, but had not thought any deeper into the matter. Radiation did seem to make sense, though. Especially in light of the fact that Scott had not been hurt by his own blast, just by the fall.
> 
> "Solar radiation," the Beast confirmed. "I don't know if you absorb other kinds, which is why I tested for a wide range. If it works, we'll have to run a few tests. See if it works with short sleeves or shorts or whether you'll need to wear pants and long sleeves until you learn to control it."
> 
> "Control it? Who says I can learn to control it?" Alex asked, incredulous.
> 
> "I think it's a reasonable expectation, Alex," Xavier said as the door swished open and closed behind him and Scott.
> 
> "Scott can't."
> 
> "I have brain damage," Scott replied. "That's where the damage is, in the control over my optic blasts."
> 
> "Oh," Alex said. He had been looking for signs of impairment in his admittedly self-limited interaction with his brother. Looking, were he honest with himself, for some manifestation of the damage that his foster family had cited as the reason why they couldn't take him, too.
> 
> "There is a whole world out there that you have yet to be exposed to, Alex," Xavier said, all gentle encouragement. "Controlling your power is only one part of that world."
> 
> "How long until you get an outfit ready?" Scott asked Xavier.
> 
> "By the end of the week, perhaps," Xavier replied.
> 
> "So I'm stuck down here until then?" Alex asked. "Or even later, until you know if it works..."
> 
> "I don't see why that has to be the case," Xavier answered. "Your injuries have healed sufficiently that you no longer need to be monitored closely. We've prepared a room for you."
> 
> "Even considering..."
> 
> "You'll have to keep the windows closed," the Beast replied. "The lead coating on the windows and all, but so long as you don't lick the windows or the walls, you should be okay. I'll go up and ready things there."
> 
> "We'll keep a monitor nearby," Scott offered. "If it gets too loud, we'll send you back down here."
> 
> The Beast took a box full of various monitors and miscellany and left the room.
> 
> "But first let's get you checked out of here," the Professor spoke up as he, too, turned to leave. "Scott, if you would..."
> 
> Scott nodded and went to the counter to pick up a pair of latex gloves as the door swished closed behind the Professor. Alex could have sworn he snapped them on his wrists intentionally.
> 
> "What are you doing?" Alex asked with great concern as Scott approached.
> 
> "Free Willy," Scott replied with a frown. "The catheter doesn't go upstairs with you."
> 
> "You don't know what you're doing!" Alex cried out, slapping at Scott's hands as they reached for the blanket. "Stay away from me! I can do it."
> 
> "I know what I'm doing and I don't like knowing what I'm doing," Scott sighed. "We've got a telepath in the house, remember? Or I could get Jean to do it. She's the one who put it in, after all."
> 
> "She did?" Alex asked, horrified.
> 
> "Yup," Scott answered. "So, me or her? You're conscious this time. You'll hear her running commentary."
> 
> "Do it," Alex sighed.
> 
> An hour later, Alex was sitting in his new bedroom. New prison, to be truthful, but Alex was too happy to be among non-sterile furnishings to care much at the moment.
> 
> Four hours later, the bloom was off the rose. The special heavy curtains were drawn and the windows closed, the door shut and the fireplace blocked off... Alex knew it wouldn't be very long before he went stir crazy. If he wasn't already. It was one thing to be stuck in a hospital bed, unable to move without upsetting tubes and IV lines and without incredible pain. It was another to be stuck wandering around (albeit slowly and in short bursts) in a room where contact with the outside world was so ostentatiously blocked off.
> 
> Alex was disappointed in himself. Five-plus years in a school with no real windows (the building had been designed to resemble an armory) and he was all jittery because the ones in his room were behind heavy curtains. The Friends of Humanity had cultivated a soldier-like society, if for no other reason but discipline. And here one of their once-brightest lights was losing his cool before the tongs and hot coals had even been brought out.
> 
> Dinner was brought a few hours later by Storm, who looked positively spooked by being in the room. Alex wasn't sure if it was the room itself or just the fact that Alex was no longer tied to the bed and thus free to move (and possibly to attack).
> 
> Storm told him that Scott and Jean were downtown keeping an eye on a ruckus caused by the Friends of Humanity. "It's about you, actually," she said. "They think the police are dragging their feet."
> 
> "Are they?" Alex asked, feeling a little less touched than he otherwise might have upon finding out that the FoH was going after the cops (the FoH had strong support from them otherwise) on his behalf.
> 
> "I don't think they can avoid it," Storm replied with a casual shrug. "Their leads are all based on faulty information."
> 
> "You planted evidence?" Alex had read the few news stories that concerned his disappearance. The police weren't sure if he was alive or dead, although the discovery of blood-soaked clothing in a van near his school had tended toward the latter conclusion. His foster family was acutely distressed, but not quite at the level of tear-stained appeals on television for the safe return of their little boy.
> 
> "Amazing what you can do with a telepath," Storm said with a catlike grin. "A hundred witnesses, all reporting the same thing. Too bad it's the _wrong_ thing..."
> 
> "You people would be great as bank robbers," Alex said with a frown.
> 
> "I knocked over a bank once," Storm replied thoughtfully. "It was too much trouble for the reward. The money's difficult to move, too."
> 
> "So you do grand larceny as well as kidnapping? What multitalented mutants we have here."
> 
> "Oh, as if you don't have a few assault-and-battery charges that should have been laid on had the victims been able to speak afterwards," Storm replied easily, although Alex didn't miss the menace underneath the words. "At least Piotr stuck to working over criminals. You specialized in the innocent."
> 
> "And I'm in my own ring of hell because of it," Alex agreed, absorbing the information about Piotr. Interesting. "I don't know which ring that would be, though. Perhaps that's what I should get Scott to fetch me next."
> 
> "I don't know why Xavier's putting all this effort into saving your soulless sorry ass," Storm said as she turned to leave. "Scott's brother or not, you're a shitty person and realizing that you are what you hate hasn't changed that one bit."
> 
> * * *
> 
>   



	11. Saving Cain: Chapter Ten

* * *

Saving Cain: Chapter 10

* * *

> The door opens and Alex, lying on the bed, jumps slightly.
> 
> "I'm sorry for the... claustrophobic atmosphere," Xavier says as he wheels into the room. "Storm is right, it is very closed in here."
> 
> "A prison is a prison," Alex answers nonchalantly.
> 
> "Indeed," Xavier replies, listening more to Alex's thoughts than his words. As the days progress, the difference between the two is widening slowly and he feels it is time enough to force Alex to rectify the two.
> 
> "Tell me, Alex," he begins, rolling up to the bed, "Do you really think you are being held captive here, or are you merely unsure of how to segue from hostility to the beginnings of friendship?"
> 
> The frankness of the question makes Alex turn to face the Professor. "I was brought here against my will. Whether or not it was for my own good is utterly beside the point."
> 
> "You're right, of course, although considering that the likelihood of you coming along willingly was next to nil," Xavier agrees mildly, waving his arm to indicate space and place. "But now that you are here, do you still see us as threats? Has anyone been unkind? Attempted to harm you? I should think that you have realized by now that the greatest danger you have been presented with in your time here has been yourself."
> 
> Predictably, Alex had nothing to say to that. What could he do but to agree?
> 
> "I'm not doing this to force you to be beholden to me," Xavier continues. "I don't expect you to owe me anything. My not insubstantial ego doesn't need to be fed in such... mundane ways."
> 
> "Comforting," Alex murmurs, sounding anything but comforted.
> 
> "I'm also not doing this to torture you... this isn't some grand comeuppance. You will either see the error of your ways or you won't," Xavier says with a shrug. "I hope that you will, of course, and that you will spare at least a moment's thought for the pain that you have caused others. But it isn't a requirement."
> 
> "Why are you doing this, then?" Alex asks, sitting up and drawing his knees slowly to his chest. He'd started stretching three days ago, gentle and tentative movements for a body that had simply been through too much in the past weeks to adapt. Xavier had encouraged him, offering to supply a mat for the floor, but Alex had demurred.
> 
> "Helping mutants or helping you?"
> 
> "Both."
> 
> "I help mutants because their treatment at the hands of the ignorant is abhorrent and because I have the power to help them," Xavier explains. "What is money if it cannot buy you anything that makes you happy? If I can right even a little wrong, then it's worth the expense. What would you call that? Ah, yes, the great mystery of liberal guilt. But I spend my own money, not anyone else's."
> 
> "Huzzah for you," Alex says with a frown.
> 
> "I also help mutants because I _am_ one," Xavier says slowly, watching both visually and telepathically for Alex's reaction. Xavier has been selective about showing off his gift. He's used it when necessary - during the Sentinel invasion of Washington, for instance - but he's downplayed it the rest of the time. Telepathy scares people more than almost any other possible mutation. As a result, his gift is a rumor, not a fact. Xavier watches Alex connect the mental dots.
> 
> "You've been fucking with my head since I've been here, haven't you?" Alex asks, almost resignedly. The boy, Xavier muses to himself, cannot possibly know how much he resembles his brother at that moment.
> 
> "If I were, which I'm not, do you honestly think I'd have let you swan dive off of the third floor balcony that you installed?" Xavier asks by way of answer. "I haven't touched a thought in your head. Although the ones that you project, I have to confess, have caused both Jean and myself to thicken our mental shielding quite a bit. We're used to being able to relax a bit in the house."
> 
> "Sorry," Alex replies sourly. "If I could keep my thoughts to myself, I would."
> 
> "Once you're stronger, I will teach you how to shield," Xavier says.
> 
> "Why?"
> 
> "Because not every telepath is as scrupulous as Jean and I are," Xavier answers, pulling the wheelchair back a little. "And no matter what you do with the rest of your life, Alex, you will have to be conscious of the fact that you are a target of more than just the Sentinels and your former comrades in the Friends of Humanity."
> 
> "I thought Magneto went boom," Alex replies, looking up from where he is picking at the weave on the comforter.
> 
> "I had other dangers in mind."
> 
> "Such as?"
> 
> Xavier is pleased to note that he had Alex's full attention now. If he is thinking about survival, then things are looking up, indeed. "There are... groups of humans that... have found more uses for mutants than merely as grave fillers." He really doesn't want to get into Weapon X with Alex. Not just yet, not until the Wolverine gets back and they have a clearer picture of what is going on.
> 
> "Am I supposed to understand that?" Alex asks, head tilted.
> 
> "You will, I'm afraid," Xavier says sadly. "But we shall cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meanwhile, I have it on good information that your test suit is arriving tomorrow morning."
> 
> "You read the mind of the person you have making it?" Alex asks sarcastically.
> 
> "Hardly. FedEx lets you track your packages on their website," Xavier replies, taking great pleasure in Alex's frown. "It should arrive by breakfast time. Perhaps you will come join us at table, then?"
> 
> Xavier felt rather than saw Alex's spike of fear and surprise.
> 
> "Am I welcome?"
> 
> "Of course you are," Xavier replies. "Why would you not be?"
> 
> "Who I am, how I've behaved, what I've done..." Alex trails off.
> 
> "Your behavior has been, well...I'm sure you will improve from here on in," Xavier says, smiling benignly. This is the first time Alex has expressed anything close to remorse and he is careful not to make too big a deal of it lest the boy react badly. "As for the rest, that is your past. Who you are has yet to be decided. Alex Summers, mutant, can be whomever you'd like him to be."
> 
> "A clean slate?" Alex scoffs. "Not very likely."
> 
> "Remember Montaigne," Xavier replies, pulling back the wheelchair and turning around to leave the room. "You are being given the opportunity to edit. It is foolish to think that your past deeds - and misdeeds - are not a formative part of who you will be. But there is no need for them to dominate the landscape."
> 
> With that, Xavier took his leave. He could hear Alex thinking over the concept of re-imagining his life. It is pure conjecture now - Alex still thinks of himself as one trapped between two words and welcome in neither. But in time, the fervent wish for things to be as they were will fade before the driving impetus to move on into the future. And Xavier only hopes that Alex could be prepared for that time.
> 
> Xavier wheels himself down the hall to the elevator. His trepidation concerning Alex fades as he is surrounded by the sounds and thoughts of his successes. Piotr, Scott, and Bobby are watching a hockey game, Jean is listening to music, and Henry and Ororo are spending quality time together. Six young mutants and the greatest issues they face at the moment are their love lives. Erik was wrong. Moments of utter banality were not only possible, but they could also be treasured.
> 
> Passing by the entertainment room, Xavier heads into his 'library', although he does not call it such so often anymore. Henry's insistence that a library, by definition, contains books has influenced the decision. The 'real' library - the one with the books (telepath or not, Xavier never had any intention of giving up his family's collection of leather-bound classics and first editions, not to mention the standard fare than any good school should possess) - is at the other end of the hall. This... this is Xavier's 'think tank', according to Henry. It is a play on the interior architecture as well as on the Cerebro unit and on the fact that Xavier comes here to do his planning.
> 
> The fireplace is going, even considering the warmth of the outside air. The metal walls are cold and mechanical and the crackling fire is the only thing that feels alive within the oval room. Xavier goes over to the hidden sideboard and pours himself a finger of brandy. He has work to do.
> 
> It is too much to expect the others to automatically accept Alex without qualm. Even were Alex to be interested in joining the X-Men - and Xavier knows that he is not, currently, considering that in any fashion - it would probably not be possible in the immediate future. Ororo and Jean dislike him immensely, both for different reasons. Henry and Bobby are ambivalent; the former out of cautious consideration and the latter out of a strange combination of curiosity (Bobby just doesn't understand how someone can be so evil without what he considers to be a very good excuse) and sympathy with the next-youngest member of the household. Piotr, as Xavier has come to realize is typical of the big Russian, has made his own evaluation apart from the group opinion and holds the greatest faith in Alex's future just as he holds the least sympathy for Alex's present.
> 
> But that is the rank and file, for lack of a better expression. Xavier knows the critical opinion belongs to Scott, both as Alex's brother and as Cyclops, the team leader. Alex has Scott's love - unconditionally, even if it is occasionally unwanted - but not necessarily Cyclops's trust. Scott is privately anxious that Alex will never get past this upheaval in his life. He fears that Alex is dooming himself to his own fate, namely a self-enforced withdrawal from the world, and he wants Alex to have a _normal_ life, one that doesn't include fighting with the X-Men. Scott has in fact already approached Xavier about not encouraging Alex to think about re-focusing his militaristic tendencies toward the pro-mutant cause.
> 
> All of this must be taken into consideration before ten tomorrow morning, the latest the containment suit will arrive. Xavier knows that Scott wants to do a test-run, wants to make sure that the suit works lest Alex cause another explosion. Scott is correct to be concerned, both for the sake of his teammates as well as for Alex's still-delicate psyche (another incident could send Alex back to the brink). But Xavier will overrule him nonetheless. Alex needs to be shown that Xavier trusts him (even if nobody else does) and besides, the boy is growing increasingly frustrated by his enforced confinement. Personal introspection does not work well with cabin fever.
> 
> Sipping his brandy, Xavier slips on the helmet controller for Cerebro. As precious as the mutants currently under his roof are to him, they are not the only ones. They are among the safe and there are many more who cannot claim the same.
> 
> * * *
> 
>   



	12. Saving Cain: Chapter Eleven

* * *

Saving Cain: Chapter 11

* * *

> Alex felt awkward in a way he hadn't since he was much younger, back in his few days in the orphanage - and damn anyone who says he couldn't possible remember - when he was being escorted around by strangers from event to event that should have been familiar.
> 
> Scott and Henry (he'd been told the Beast's name because Henry really didn't like being called 'the Beast' and Alex really wasn't in a position to argue applicability) showed up at his door a half-hour ago with the package. The outfit was simple - black pants and a gray long-sleeve t-shirt (it looks like Alex's own winter pajamas). After a series of tests for emissions, Henry deemed it a success and Alex was allowed to cross the threshold of his gilded cage for the first time in almost a week.
> 
> Piotr and Xavier were sitting at the kitchen table when they arrived. Bobby, it was explained, was still sleeping and the girls had already eaten. Alex took the news in stride - Jean and Storm didn't like him, this he knew - and sat down self-consciously at the seat indicated by Xavier.
> 
> "How do you feel?" Xavier asked, looking at him closely.
> 
> "Relieved," Alex admitted. He took a sip of the glass of orange juice that had been placed before him. "I haven't seen the sun in a week."
> 
> Henry came to the table with two bowls, two spoons, and the box of Chex. Scott brought two coffee mugs in one hand and the coffeepot in the other. Piotr held his cup out for a refill. It was casual domestic male - the kind that was only possible when there were no women in the room - and Alex wasn't sure whether to be comforted or not.
> 
> "You're sufficiently healed from your injuries," Xavier spoke up. "I don't see why you couldn't go down to the gym if you'd like. You can get only so much done in your room."
> 
> Alex wrinkled his nose as he reached for the milk. "If I have to live in these togs, I'd rather not sweat in them."
> 
> "The gym is... safe for you to wear what you will," Xavier replied. "It's safe for almost any possible mutation, I'd imagine."
> 
> "If it can survive Bobby, it can survive anyone," Piotr agreed. He reached for a piece of toast off of the pile.
> 
> "It would be a good balance to the mental training you will need," Xavier said thoughtfully as he sipped his tea.
> 
> "Mental training?" Alex asked, momentarily confused. "Oh, yeah. So I can stop offending telepaths with my cankered thoughts."
> 
> "Alex," Scott warned with a sigh.
> 
> "Coping mechanism, Scott," Alex retorted with a mocking, matching sigh. "Deal with it."
> 
> Scott shook his head silently and reached over to pick up the milk to return it to the refrigerator.
> 
> "I'd like to do more with you than merely teach you to keep your thoughts to yourself," Xavier began. "I think we could make headway in teaching you to control your powers."
> 
> "Control my powers? Do you even know what they _are_?" Alex asked. If there had been any progress in that area, nobody had talked to him about it.
> 
> "Plasma," Henry spoke up from between mouthfuls of cereal. "At least that's our lead candidate."
> 
> "Plasma as in the stuff in stars?" Alex was not sure whether or not to be amused or just stick with the pure disbelief that he had gone with so far.
> 
> "Yes," Xavier agreed. "It makes sense in a poetic fashion. Your power source lies in the moon and stars just as Scott's rely on the sun."
> 
> "But this isn't poetry," Alex returned with a frown. He fiddled with his spoon, chasing an errant Chex around the bowl. "And I'm not supposed to be out in the sun, either, in addition to the moon and stars."
> 
> "Allow a man his poetic license," Xavier said with a smile. "But you are correct in emphasizing the seriousness of the situation. I think I can help you learn how to focus your powers so that you can release the... plasma, or whatever it is... at lower levels, thus preventing any more explosions."
> 
> "How?" Alex asked as took a sip of his coffee.
> 
> "Storm's experiences with her own burgeoning powers have given me a few ideas," Xavier replied. He extended his arm outward and pointed. "She envisions her powers as an electric current and her hands as the contacts. She may not have known what she was doing when she started, but the effect is the same - she has greatly improved her control with a focusing technique. We just need to find one for you."
> 
> Alex considered Xavier's words as he finished his cereal. Grabbing two pieces of toast before Piotr and Henry finished off the pile between them, he leaned back in his seat. "Hands work, I guess. It's better than feet or head or..."
> 
> "Alex," Scott interrupted with a frown, clearly seeing where his brother was going with the thought.
> 
> "That would be interesting," Piotr mused aloud. "Mutations are so rarely useful like that."
> 
> "So says the man of steel," Henry murmured.
> 
> "It's all or nothing, you know that," Piotr returned mournfully.
> 
> "Can we get our minds out of the gutter for a second?" Scott asked. Alex was about to tell Scott to lighten up when he realized that his brother was desperately trying to keep himself from laughing.
> 
> "As I was saying," Xavier continued blandly, a smile playing on his lips, "A focusing technique would greatly improve your control. And the sooner you can control your powers, the sooner you can return to a normal life. And then, perhaps, we can start working on how your powers can be used to... improve your life in some fashion, if perhaps not the one that seems to be popular with the current audience. But I get ahead of myself there. We must crawl before we start the marathon."
> 
> "When do we start to crawl?" Alex asked. He didn't want to sound excited. He didn't even want to sound hopeful. But if he had come to one conclusion over the past week of isolation upstairs it had been that there was no point in planning for the future if the future was the same as the present had been - seclusion. And if there was a chance at controlling whatever it was he did - plasma? - then perhaps he could afford to consider what lay ahead of him.
> 
> Xavier looked at his watch. "How about in an hour?"
> 
> Alex nodded.
> 
> Xavier left them alone after that. Alex sipped his coffee and he and Henry watched Piotr argue the strength of the Rangers' powers play with the newspaper. Scott had disappeared at some point after Xavier and Piotr had explained that Scott had a training practice to go through.
> 
> Forty-five minutes later, Alex followed Henry and Piotr (now finished with his newspaper) down to the basement. In a room adjacent to the clinic, Henry seemed to have a sort of workshop. It was filled with gadgets and monitors and all sorts of equipment that Alex could sort of identify, but not really.
> 
> "Nice playpen," Alex commented as he took the seat indicated for him. Piotr was leaning against the wall by the door, but if he was there as bodyguard, Alex didn't know. It wasn't as if he could take on Henry by himself, nor did he especially want to.
> 
> "It is, isn't it?" Henry agreed as he tinkered around. "Lots of toys I never thought I'd get my hands on once the army decided that I wasn't meant to be all that I could be." He turned around with what Alex now knew was a Geiger counter that had been specially modified to detect whatever it was that Alex gave off. "Good. It's still keeping you cool," he murmured and then turned back to the workbench.
> 
> "So I can't pop popcorn in my hands?" Alex asked.
> 
> "You're still deader than the battery in the remote control upstairs," Henry agreed, not turning around.
> 
> From his spot by the door, Piotr chuckled. "We have the makings of how many top-secret weapons in this place and we're out of AA batteries."
> 
> "I'm seriously starting to debate the merits of our plan to wait out Bobby," Henry replied sadly. "Encouraging his sense of having to carry his own weight aside, he has adjusted disgustingly well to having to get up to change the channel."
> 
> Alex chuckled despite himself. Bobby was the team's baby brother, the irresponsible, laid-back, goofy normal teenager that Alex had never been even before he had ever heard of the Friends of Humanity. Alex was only a year older than Bobby but it might as well have been five for the differences in their approaches to life.
> 
> The others found Bobby's antics and outlook endearing - except, apparently, when he refused to go to the drug store for batteries - but Alex thought his own reaction was something closer to jealousy. Bobby was so frighteningly _normal_. He had left his nice suburban life to come here and, Alex knew because Bobby had told him, he still called home every night. Bobby was looking forward to turning sixteen so he could get his driver's license ("You should see the cars Xavier has in the garage, Alex. Much cooler than Dad's Nissan, that's for sure.") and he spent most of his waking hours concentrating on girls, sports, and only occasionally on his studies.
> 
> Most importantly, at least as far as Alex was concerned, Bobby had long gotten over any anxiety he might have had about his powers and now looked forward with awe and curiosity to any application he could find for his newfound talents. Bobby had apparently gone seamlessly from worrying about freezing someone to death to wondering when it was that he'd be able to make his own ice cream.
> 
> "Here," Henry said, taking Alex out of his reverie. He held out a chain with a pendant hanging off of it.
> 
> "What is this?" Alex asked as he took it. Squinting down into his palm, he eyed the small silver ball pendant.
> 
> "It's the micro version of this," Henry answered, waving the emission monitor with one huge hand. "It's a kind of zone alarm. It's silver now, right? Well, if you start to get dangerous, it'll turn blue."
> 
> "What do I do if it turns blue?" Alex asked. He put the chain over his head and tucked the ball pendant behind the collar of his shirt.
> 
> "Until you learn to control your powers, I guess run like hell away from anything that you don't want melted down," Henry replied with a shrug.
> 
> "That's helpful," Alex snorted, although not unkindly. He knew that an early warning system was better than none at all. "How effective is it?"
> 
> "It's been calibrated pretty well, if I don't say so myself," Henry said as he turned off the workbench light. "It runs in stages. Light blue isn't as bad as dark blue. Robin's egg blue should be enough for you to get a good running start. If it hits midnight blue, you're gonna do what you did upstairs. Imminently."
> 
> "Wunderbar," Alex sighed. "I guess that's impetus enough to learn how to control myself."
> 
> "Speaking of, you should go upstairs and meet with the Professor now," Piotr said as he pushed himself off of the wall he was leaning against. "I'll take you."
> 
> "Are you my escort for the day?" Alex asked. Now that he was healthy and somewhat protected from his own powers, Xavier undoubtedly considered him a flight risk.
> 
> "Don't flatter yourself," Piotr snorted. "This place is huge. I'm only offering because you don't know where you're going."
> 
> Alex nodded skeptically and, remembering Piotr's lame joke about five hundred pound bears, gingerly hopped off of the stool he was sitting on.
> 
> Two flights of stairs and three hallways later, Piotr knocked on one of a set of double wooden doors and waved Alex through after receiving an answering reply.
> 
> Alex was stunned when he looked around. The old-fashioned doors belied a futuristic interior with metal walls and funky lighting. "Ever see 'The Sleeper'?" he asked to cover up his discomfiture.
> 
> Xavier chuckled, although Alex wasn't sure whether or not he got the joke. The cat that Henry had said only liked Xavier was there, to Alex's distinct non-surprise.
> 
> "I apologize if the decorating is a bit... off-putting," Xavier said. "As can be evidenced by the late Magneto's choice in headgear, psi-shielding has yet to be turned into anything approaching fashionable."
> 
> Alex stared with cocked eyebrow, but at Xavier's prompting, he went to sit in the Queen Anne chair by the fireplace. "You're a telepath and you've created a room that can't be breached in or out by telepaths?"
> 
> "The telepathic equivalent of a rubber room, I'm afraid," Xavier explained with a sigh. "Even though the shielding can be turned off and the world let in, there are times when the constant effort a telepath must put in to keep other minds out can be just too much. The shielding serves a dual function, however. It allows me to use Cerebro without interference. Sort of like a recording studio."
> 
> "Cerebro," Alex repeated dumbly. He looked up at the motorcycle helmet suspended by cables from the high ceiling.
> 
> "It amplifies my telepathic abilities," Xavier said, looking up at the device. "I use it to keep track of mutants, mostly. It is how I found you."
> 
> "Why are you telling me all of this?" Alex asked curiously. "Why are you telling me the X-Men's secrets? Is that not monumentally risky?"
> 
> "It is, which is why I'm doing it," Xavier replied with a smile. The cat on his lap purred and Xavier idly scratched behind one of its ears. "I need you to see that I can trust you with these things."
> 
> "But you don't."
> 
> "I do, for now," Xavier said. "Besides, you know so much already. Our names, our likes and dislikes... this is no different than knowing the specifics of Scott's visor or the limits of Piotr's transforming abilities."
> 
> "That's different," Alex contradicted. "They're soldiers. You're the general."
> 
> "We're all soldiers," Xavier corrected. "And I would not put my students at any more risk than myself if it were at all possible."
> 
> Suddenly, the light bulb went on in Alex's head. "You want me to see that you trust me with sensitive information because you're about to go crawling in my head and you want me to trust you to do it fairly."
> 
> "Exactly," Xavier agreed with a smile. "I told you I'd stay out of your mind and I have. But now I need your permission to enter."
> 
> Alex took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. He had been prepared for this in a loose way ever since he had been here. There was a telepath - two, once Xavier had been confirmed - and there was really nothing keeping them from going into his head and re-arranging all of the marbles to suit their game. Nothing except their word and Alex knew that that in turn was based on their scruples. And now he had to decide whether those scruples were real or whether they were really just convenient.
> 
> "I have nothing to lose," he said finally. "You'd know if I betrayed you - you're going to teach me to shield, so you'll know how to bypass that shielding - and you could just wipe my mind clean at any point. You could have done so at any point. If it makes things easier for me to cooperate, then I will."
> 
> Xavier smiled benignly. "Not the enthusiasm I'd have wished, but not bad as a starting point. Shall we begin?"
> 
> And they did. And Alex was sure that he'd never be able to look at the world in the same way ever again. Xavier talking in his head was the first surprise - his Communication and Theater teachers would be appreciative of the various tones and timbres a mental voice could display. Xavier taught Alex how to think at a telepath, how to shield (even withdrawing from the link so that Alex could construct his own in private), and how to think past shielding. It was not difficult in theory, but Alex saw the need for practice and the benefits of experience.
> 
> The silent work was interrupted by a knock on the door. Alex jumped.
> 
> "Enter," Xavier called out and Jean came in.
> 
> "Lunch is ready in the kitchen," she said without preamble. "The two of you have been at it for four hours, so I thought you'd need a break."
> 
> "Thank you, Jean," Xavier said with a smile. "Would you care to witness a demonstration of our progress?"
> 
> It wasn't really a question and Alex was sure that Jean would much prefer to watch paint dry, but she nodded anyway.
> 
> "Lower your shields a little," Xavier commanded.
> 
> Jean must have, because a smile slowly crept onto her face. "Cool," she said to Alex. "You're not broadcasting anymore." She turned to Xavier. "How stable are they?"
> 
> Xavier didn't answer, but the next thing Alex felt was the mental equivalent of a cannonball going through his newly constructed mental walls, a far cry from Xavier's gentle poking and prodding. Alex frowned and started slowly reconstructing his walls.
> 
> "Don't worry, Alex," Jean offered with a shrug. She sounded more friendly than she had at any point in Alex's stay. "It's your first day. Nobody's shields are that good at the beginning. They'll crumble if you're surprised, they'll be really thin when you sleep, and they'll probably disappear once or twice when you're not paying attention. If I can do that in a few weeks, then we'll worry."
> 
> "Yeah," Alex said with a sigh. He knew Jean was right, but he was conditioned to being a quick study and to getting everything right in the first few tries and failure did not sit well with him.
> 
> "Why don't we break for lunch," Xavier suggested, "And then we'll pick it up afterwards for a few more hours?"
> 
> Jean wheeled the Professor down the halls toward the kitchen and Alex trailed along behind slowly.
> 
> It wasn't a formal lunch. Henry and Storm were in Manhattan and Piotr, who had to be pried away from his computer, trailed in after Alex had already sat down next to Scott.
> 
> "How's your head?" Scott asked him as he reached for the mustard for his sandwich. Jean had made a roast the previous evening and the leftovers comprised the bulk of lunch.
> 
> "In one piece," Alex replied. He didn't want to sound cold, but he didn't want to sound like he was inviting conversation either. "My shielding is barely adequate, apparently."
> 
> "What did you make yours out of?" Bobby asked. "Mine has ice cubes for bricks."
> 
> "Um... regular bricks," Alex replied. It's what Xavier had suggested and he had not thought to individualize. "I'll get fancy once I stop having to rebuild them every time a telepath sneezes."
> 
> "You should make yours out of plasma," Bobby suggested. "It would look like liquid fire or something."
> 
> "You spend too much time with your video games," Piotr said with a chuckle as he speared a pickle.
> 
> The rest of lunch passed without further discussion of telepathic architecture and it wasn't that long before Alex was wheeling Xavier back to the metal room. They continued working through until dinner, at which point Xavier said that they were finished for the day.
> 
> Alex spent his first night of liberty with Piotr, Bobby, and Scott as they watched another hockey game. Jean interrupted them once by sneak-attacking, destroying Alex's shields and singing U2 lyrics in his head, all without being in the room.
> 
> After the game was over, Alex headed to his bedroom. He wasn't going to sleep for a while, however. How could he sleep with all that he had seen that day? Mental shields, energy shields... Now, for the first time in the privacy of his own thoughts, Alex could consider his future.
> 
> * * *
> 
>   



	13. Saving Cain: Chapter Twelve

* * *

Saving Cain: Chapter 12

* * *

> "So what are you going to do?" Cyclops asks as he jumps over a barricade and drops down behind it. Plasma blasts scream over his head and he can feel the heat. Behind him, the remnant of a tree goes up in flames.
> 
> It's been thirteen weeks since Alex was brought to Westchester and this is his first time in the training room with another person. Everyone knows that Scott is the last person Alex wants to practice with, but since he's the only one whom Alex can't really hurt, there isn't much of an argument.
> 
> "I don't know yet," Alex replies testily as he runs toward the flag, ducking and rolling behind a hill as he sees Cyclops peek up over his hiding spot and raise a hand to his visor.
> 
> ZAKK!!!
> 
> Alex is about to loudly point out that Cyclops wasn't even close to hitting him when he realizes that he wasn't the target and has to jump to his feet and run as the tree behind him starts to topple.
> 
> Up above in the observation room, Xavier monitors their progress. Alex has mastered mental shields with admirable speed and while they are not perfect, both he and Jean now feel comfortable with reducing their own shields to 'home base level.' To Xavier's great pride, Alex's shields are still holding despite his pre-occupation with blasting his brother to Kingdom Come.
> 
> As well as mental shielding is going, control of plasma production - and Henry was right when he predicted it - is moving less quickly. Alex can no more turn off his mutation than Scott can, a fact that disturbs both brothers. Alex fears that he will end up like Scott and Scott fears that he is right. Xavier has explained that it is simply a matter of Alex learning to 'vent' low-level emissions, but that clinical assessment won't make anyone feel any more secure until Alex actually learns such. In the meanwhile, when he needs to Alex powers down the hard way - plasma-blasting targets. The focusing techniques have allowed Alex some measure of controlling the blasts, but he is still wearing a specially designed containment suit (different from his 'civilian' clothes) to help with the rest.
> 
> "I think England might be nice," Cyclops calls out as he makes his move toward the next protected area.
> 
> "Book yourself a ticket," Alex calls back as he arcs a blast over the rock Scott is hiding behind, sending his brother scurrying. Quick follow-up blasts fail to hit him. "Or better yet, steal the Blackbird again."
> 
> Xavier notes that after an hour of being chased around like a rabbit by Cyclops, Alex is finally putting some of his experience to good use and making himself both a harder target as well as a more worthy adversary. Alex has thrown enough rocks and Molotov cocktails to have a decent grasp of the physics of war. His hesitation to use what he learned as a soldier for the Friends of Humanity does not come out of any loathing of his past life, but instead a simple lack of realization that those... skills... can in fact be applicable here.
> 
> It won't be enough to keep Cyclops from trouncing him soundly - Xavier does not think that Alex has yet realized that Scott is taking it easy on him - but it will be enough to perhaps ease some of the tension between the brothers. Tonight's exercise is merely the latest in Scott's attempts to forge some sort of relationship with Alex. The others have met with decidedly mixed success.
> 
> "Up yours," Cyclops retorts as he destroys the hiding place Alex was running to before he could get there. "I wasn't telling you what to do. I was just offering an opinion."
> 
> "You've offered your opinion enough about this," Alex growls, raising his arm to aim at his brother.
> 
> His aim is not true.
> 
> Cyclops stops running when he realizes that the blast missed and turns around. And then he breaks into laughter. "You torched Bambi," he squeezes out between gasps for air.
> 
> Early on, Jean had modified the computer program to, in 'fun mode', turn collateral damage into something less gory. In this case, the virtual deer Alex accidentally hit has been transformed into a venison meatloaf sitting on a plate with potatoes and carrots. Scott, whom Xavier is fairly sure has never done his programs in fun mode, is beside himself with glee.
> 
> "I hated Bambi," Alex mutters, trying very hard not to follow his brother's example and only partially succeeding in keeping a straight face.
> 
> "Bambi made you cry," Scott says hesitantly after he's stopped laughing long enough to catch his breath. "Mom gave Dad serious grief for renting it in the first place. She said he should have learned from when I watched it the first time."
> 
> "You cried, too?" Alex asks, sounding mildly curious.
> 
> Up above, Xavier sighs with relief. Alex goes one of two ways when Scott tries to bring up their previous life. Either he storms off in spiteful anger or he asks tentative questions.
> 
> "There was a forest near the base we were living on at the time," Scott says slowly as he sits up on the grass. "I had half a squadron out looking for me after I went to go find Bambi's mother before there could be a fire in the woods."
> 
> "You were a do-gooder from the beginning, weren't you?" Alex asks rhetorically as he leans against a large rock.
> 
> "And you were a pain in the ass," Scott affirms. "Some things just don't change."
> 
> "Yeah," Alex agrees sadly.
> 
> The two sit quietly where they are for a few minutes until Scott moves to get up. "It's time to go."
> 
> Alex nods and gets up as well. Up above, Xavier leaves the control room and heads down the hallway. Scott and Alex are waiting for him by his office with Henry and Jean. They are all in uniform.
> 
> "You're ready?" he asks as he approaches.
> 
> "Yeah," Scott - now fully into Cyclops mode - agrees. "We'll meet up with Iceman, Storm, and Colossus and proceed with the plan."
> 
> Xavier nods. He doesn't know all of the particulars and isn't especially concerned about it.
> 
> "Go, then. And good luck."
> 
> The four nod and head back downstairs and to the hangar where they keep the X-vehicles.
> 
> A half-hour later, the quartet is exiting the van across from an isolated part of the shoreline in the Hunters Point section of the Bronx. The night is foggy - unnaturally so, courtesy of a little mutant power. Storm and Iceman are sitting on the hood of an old, beat-up Trans Am and Colossus is standing next to them.
> 
> "We all set?" Cyclops asks as he approaches.
> 
> "Yeah," Storm confirms. "I'm not sure how much longer I can hold the fog, though. Especially if I need to do other stuff."
> 
> "We'll work fast," Cyclops assures her.
> 
> "Your... pals... didn't mind losing a car?" Beast asks as he walks over to the driver's side door and opens it. He places a canister (filled with 'ashes' that will be used to identify the funeral pyre of missing Friends of Humanity leader Alex Summers) in the back seat.
> 
> "It's hotter than hot," Storm replies as she gets up off the hood. "Whatever this was used for, they don't even want the well-oiled V-8 engine tucked inside." She pats the hood for emphasis.
> 
> "Cars," Marvel Girl mutters as she walks away from the group a little. She's on guard duty, her mental eyes open for anyone from a drunk to a couple of kids looking for a quiet place to park and fool around.
> 
> The preparations are rather simple. Alex gets into the car and takes off his gloves, putting his handprints on everything he can reach. In the unlikely event anything survives the blast, of course. He gets out, sliding his hands along the windshield for good measure, and joins Iceman on the side closest to the water's edge.
> 
> Colossus and Beast are fiddling with the passenger seat, trying to get it pushed down.
> 
> "It's not going to matter, you guys," Storm points out. "Everything's going to be in pieces when we're done."
> 
> "I like to be thorough," Colossus replies primly as he finally gets the seat to move.
> 
> "When the Professor made sure we all had blood on file," Beast says as he stands back to give Colossus more room to move, "I didn't think this was what he had in mind in terms of usage."
> 
> "He said 'for life or death' situations," Colossus replies as he empties the unit of (Alex's) blood around the back seat. "This just happens to be a death situation."
> 
> A little more fussing around and Colossus ducks his head out of the low-riding car. "We're ready," he announces.
> 
> "You're up, Iceman," Cyclops calls over.
> 
> "Ice walls it is," the young man replies. So close to the water's edge, it's easy for him to build a tall, thick open circle around the car. "How's that?"
> 
> "Great," Cyclops encourages as the others gather around him at the opening of the circle. "Marvel Girl, are we clear?"
> 
> "Ready," she replies.
> 
> "Storm, you set?" He looks over to her.
> 
> "Ready, Cyclops," she confirms, eyes already glowing a brilliant white.
> 
> "All yours... Havok," Cyclops says finally. He dislikes the codename intensely. Alex didn't want one -- it was taken as a sign of progress that he didn't openly mock the 'post-human rebaptism' Xavier pronounced upon him -- and the irony of the name (for what else is both Scott and Cyclops but the personification of order and control) has not escaped anyone.
> 
> Alex nods and closes his eyes. He can feel the burn down his spine and doesn't need to look to see that his hands are glowing. The suit that has been modified to look like the X-Men's uniform does not block the cosmic radiation from entering his system, so most of the energy he expended being chased by his brother earlier has been replenished. A deep breath and he opens his eyes as he raises his arms.
> 
> "Goodbye, humanity," he whispers as he lets go.
> 
> A stationary car is much easier to hit than a well-trained man in motion and Alex doesn't miss this time.
> 
> The plasma stream hits with ferocious force and the explosion is intense. Storm generates a stiff wind to keep help the ice cylinder contain most of the blast and Marvel Girl uses her telekinesis to catch the few strays bits of shrapnel. To Iceman's pleasant surprise, the frozen barrier holds well.
> 
> When the fire has mostly burned out - and being so hot, it burns very quickly - the team springs into action once more. Cyclops uses his optic blasts to carve up the wall and Colossus tosses the chunks into the nearby river. Storm concentrates on dissipating the remaining fog and Beast goes to retrieve the van. After everyone has piled in, Marvel Girl erases all of their footprints from the dirt ground.
> 
> The drive back to Westchester is quiet and there isn't much socializing once they return home. The team showers, hits the kitchen for a snack, and then heads off to their various rooms except for Cyclops, who goes to find Xavier.
> 
> "It's done," he says as Xavier offers him cognac. He accepts.
> 
> "The 'ashes' should be enough, plus the blood," Xavier says as he pours. "Unpleasant business, all. How did Alex seem?"
> 
> "A little angry, I think, but only at circumstance," Cyclops replies, sitting in the offered chair. "Not at me, for once."
> 
> "I'd tell you it takes time, but you know that," Xavier sighs. "Everyone else did well?"
> 
> "Iceman was fine - he did a really good job with the shield," Cyclops agrees. "And Storm held the fog throughout. Nobody else was doing anything they hadn't done a thousand times before."
> 
> Xavier waits as the young man sips at his cognac and wills himself to calm down enough to be Scott and not Cyclops.
> 
> "I shouldn't have brought up the college thing," Scott says finally. "Oxford would be great for him, but if I keep pushing he's going to not go purely out of spite."
> 
> Xavier smiles at him. "I trust you can keep a secret, Scott. He's decided already."
> 
> "Decided as in he's made his decision and you can tell because his shields still slip or decided as in he's told you to pull your strings," Scott asks, curious. He knows Alex wouldn't actually tell him either way.
> 
> "Decided as in he had a videophone interview with the Master," Xavier says. "He'll probably start Balliol College in the fall term."
> 
> Scott nods. "Good," he says, swirling the cognac in its glass and watching the legs form. "I guess that's why he wanted to come tonight, then."
> 
> "Perhaps," Xavier says. "But I suspect that Alex just wanted to put his past to rest."
> 
> "I just wish that I wasn't only part of his past," Scott murmurs.
> 
> There's nothing Xavier can say to Scott that will convince him that while time cannot heal all wounds, it will heal most. So he doesn't say anything. Instead, they sit together in silence, sipping their drinks and watching the fire. The cat that everyone thinks only likes Xavier actually likes Scott as well and clambers up onto his lap expecting to be lavished with attention. Scott rubs his thumb along the bridge of her nose as she nestles her head into his palm.
> 
> After a while, the glasses are empty, the cat is dozing, and Scott tries not to yawn loudly. He transfers the cat to Xavier's lap and bids him goodnight and heads off to his room.
> 
> * * *
> 
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> 
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